A Mhaighdean Bhan Uasal
by mellowenglishgal
Summary: 2016. It was the year of the Rio de Janeiro Olympics. The Zika virus. Great Britain was considering leaving the EU; the Syrian conflict was ongoing. Lillian returned from her fourth tour in the Middle East in time to share her eccentric grandfather's last days. On a March hike through the Highlands, she makes a pilgramage to his favourite place: Craigh na dun.
1. 2016

**A.N.** : The premise of a WWII nurse travelling through time is a good premise – I'm more interested in a ferocious female Army medic from 2016 trying to navigate the Highlands in a corset.

I was making parmesan biscuits when suddenly I was struck by an apostrophe: Dougal Mackenzie is also Dwalin from _The Hobbit_.

I was inspired by _Brave_ , Billy Connelly and Jamie's shoulder-muscles.

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 **A Mhaighdean Bhan Uasal**

 _01_

* * *

" _A naoidhean bhig, cluinn mo ghuth_

 _Mise ri d' thaobh, O mhaighdean bhàn_

 _Ar rìbhinn òg, fàs a's faic_

 _Do thìr, dìleas féin_

 _A ghrian a's a ghealach, stiùir sinn_

 _Gu uair ar cliù 's ar glòir_

 _Naoidhean bhig, ar rìbhinn òg_ …"

Noble Maiden Fair _, Brave_

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2016\. It was the year of the Rio de Janeiro Olympics. The Zika virus. The previous September, Queen Elizabeth II had just outlasted Queen Victoria is the longest-reigning British monarch at sixty-three years on the throne. Great Britain was considering the wisdom of leaving the EU; the Syrian conflict was ongoing, and the Paris bombings were still in the back of everyone's minds, shaping the American presidential election-campaigns. Should the clever, racist Trump win the election in America, the world political stage would be altered maybe irreparably. How much damage could one man do in four years, she wondered, and was glad America could only turn on itself if things came to a head. As America had done after the Great War, the rest of the world could turn its back on an arrogant nation with a floundering economy and an overt racist at the helm.

The recent rash of dystopian fiction turned into film franchises had caught her up in its tide; she _adored_ films, having her heart broken and drawing her to the edge of her seat in the grips of terror, anticipation. She had often wondered how America had become _The Hunger Games_ ' "Panem", sending children into gladiatorial arenas. She wondered, should Trump win, how America would schism in the event Europe and the rest of the world – a great majority of countries whom America had embargoed – cut political ties. She wondered where the line was, the one that heralded a second American Civil War. What would that look like?

She had been _in_ active warzones more than she had been out of them the last ten years. After the damage she had seen out in the desert, the loss of civilian life as well as that of soldiers, her friends, she wondered whether a good shakeup like a civil war might do America some good. The last domestic war the continent had seen had started in 1864 – even during World War II, it was Pearl Harbour that suffered the only direct attack on American soil by the Japanese. She didn't hanker for war, but watching the _BBC News_ every night, listening to and becoming more and more angered by Trump's jargon, she couldn't help feeling that a good sharp slap in the face was needed.

A welcome reprieve to the _news_ had been the Six Nations – she had flown home from her fourth (and final) tour before the new year, exhausted mentally and physically, brain whirring with plans she knew she needed to make, and in agony at the sight of her granddad.

After eighty-five years, he had waited only long enough for confirmation from the publisher that his last book, his swansong, was going into print, watched the Six Nations with her, shared a bottle of his favourite whisky, told her old stories he hadn't repeated in years, sang her favourite lullaby, and died peacefully in his sleep.

She had promised him that she would take a deep breath before she dove headfirst into another adventure. No more tours of the Middle East with the Royal Army, no, she wanted to move in a different direction. Not active service but still helping people – she had been looking at _Help for Heroes_ , helping soldiers rehabilitate. It would be different, helping them with their recovery after being the immediate point of contact for wounded soldiers on the front lines. She had the idea; she just needed a rest. A long one. She had put herself under too much strain the last few years, lacking any purpose beyond work after Tommy's death. And she wanted to…to make a sort of _pilgrimage_ – to breathe in the cutting Highland air as she hiked throughout Scotland visiting Granddad's favourite haunts. To remember him. A B &B every few nights was what she could afford; otherwise, her single-man tent and thermal sleeping-bag were her best-friends. Granddad would be proud; he'd tried to raise her on whisky and midges, and might have succeeded without the intervention of her more sophisticated Parisian mother – who had moved Lillian and her sister Bridget from Hampshire to north-eastern Scotland after the premature death of their father.

She had set out from Inverness after a spine-tingling encounter brought on by stories of hauntings, witch-burnings, a whisky-induced vision of a Highlander in full kit, smiling at her in a flash of lightning, gone as she had glanced over her shoulder, interested in spite of herself. The odd thing about him hadn't been his kilt, or his height, or the way the fine hairs at the back of her neck prickled up as her breasts grew heavy and her stomach filled with that deliciousness like whisky… His kilt hadn't moved in the driving rain and wind. She had chalked it up to too much whisky, and the storm; she'd probably imagined him… It had been so long since she'd realised a man was interested in her that her friend had started to call her 'Echo' – merely a sigh on the wind, pining for a long-lost lover. _Charming_ , she had thought; but it wasn't far off.

Putting the kilted man out of her mind as she read the morning paper, she had thanked the owner for her breakfast and for lighting the fire in her room last night in anticipation of her sodden return, paid her bill, and set off. Inverness was a town full of ghost-stories, and she knew Granddad would have listened with an amused twitch to the corners of his lips, eyes alight with the brightness she had always associated with him keeping secrets or telling his favourite stories. Granddad had had a wealth of knowledge about this area – most of Scotland, really, wherever the Jacobite uprisings had had particularly strong local support or where ghost-stories and interesting titbits of history were prevalent, but he'd never told her stories of a Highlander ghost before – at least not male; there were plenty of stories about women burned for witchcraft screaming in the square. Most of the victims had been from the late seventeenth-century, but further North there had been trials into the 1740s, and a few years ago, Granddad had gleefully uncovered evidence of a case where two accused witches had simply vanished into thin-air from their prison-cell. She had rolled her eyes at Granddad's eerie fascination with the macabre – why he thought it important for Lillian to grow up on stories of witch-burnings, taking willow bark tea for pain-relief, learning the tartans of Scottish clans by sight, she would never know. But she couldn't say she wasn't interested, either; through Granddad she had developed a love of learning, and, as it gave them some common-ground, she had enjoyed reading up on eighteenth-century, learning details of lives lost to history.

After last night's storm, the skies had cleared and everyone seemed to be enjoying a rare fine day; she wandered the shops, unimpressed by the modern developments that made Granddad writhe with annoyance, muttering darkly in Gaelic to himself. She'd only ever understood the swear-words he used – and he'd flick her ear if he ever caught her repeating them. She couldn't help smiling as she ate a Scotch pie – with baked beans and a poached egg on top! – thinking of how Granddad would swear with gusto and be scandalised to hear her and Bridget bitching each other out. Licking egg-yolk off her fingers, she exited the little café, consulting a map and examining the schedules at the bus-station just off the High Street before paying for a ticket, pondering how little could be bought with a _pound_ these days, and watched the scenery, tuning out the gossip of some blue-rinse biddies behind her, growing more content as the town fell away, the landscape becoming wilder. Less civilised. The soundtrack of the recent _Far from the Madding Crowd_ filled her mind, the entrancing, heart-breaking melodies and swooping crescendos that had so embodied the Dorset scenery captured for the film; Scotland had _Braveheart_ , and pretty as the Princess's theme was, it wasn't quite the same. Scotland deserved someone to immortalise the incredible beauty of the peaks and carpets of heather, the snow-capped duns and mirror-bright lochs.

Her stop was halfway into the middle of nowhere, down a long, winding forest lane that saw little traffic beyond the twice-daily bus. The road had become overgrown, marked with potholes that set her teeth on edge, but it was real, and _raw_ , when she stepped off the bus. She breathed a sigh of relief once the rumble of the bus engine had faded into the distance. A chilling wind had caught up since she had stepped onto the bus – or perhaps it was merely that leaving the perceived protection of the town had left her feeling exposed. She didn't mind, but the wind cut through her sharp white blouse. Not being a hiking day, she had dressed herself up a little more nicely than she usually would. Since leaving the Army, she had worn her hair down nearly every day that she hadn't been hiking; for the first time in ten years (except when not on active service) she wore _jewellery_. She had put on her favourite pair of real leather trousers, buttoned at the crotch rather than zipped, tucked into her Army-issue boots. They had served her well, and she wouldn't have felt comfortable in walking-boots.

Attached to her worn brown-leather rucksack was rolled up the tartan of her clan, the MacEwans. Once upon a time, Granddad had found their name recorded as _Mac Eoghainn_ ; she preferred the Gaelic spelling, thought it interesting and odd. And the yards of thick wool tartan she unfurled were the tartan of Clan MacEwan that hadn't changed in hundreds of years. Granddad had refurbished and kitted out with traditional flying shuttle looms an early eighteenth-century mill that now held landmark status as the only traditional tartan mill in Scotland. The tartan was made by hand, with Scottish wool and natural dyes set the old-fashioned way, sought-after by enthusiasts and used in Hollywood movies and BBC costume-dramas. Just another more accessible part of the legacy Granddad had left his country when he had died, alongside the fifteen historical books he had written, the poetry, the active involvement in the Highland Games.

A lot of people thought traditional tartans were the gaudy bright-reds and yellows more often than not worked into Hogwarts uniforms by teenagers writing fanfiction. In truth, a glaring crimson kilt was more likely to frighten off game and get you killed if you wandered through the forest in it. No, the MacEwan tartan was an exquisite mixture of sage- and dark-greens, creams and fawns, emulating the colours of the Highlands themselves, misty and dark at once, threaded with whispers of heather-purple and the forget-me-not of a rare sunny sky, or carpets of bluebells in the forests. Granddad had worn a kilt every day of his life; and he'd taught Lillian all about them. Women had never worn kilts, though they had a feminine equivalent, developed from the sixteenth century; the ' _earasaid'_. Her sister Bridget had once rather unforgivingly called it a pleated blanket. And it was true, as Lillian unfurled the fabric, it was just a rather long blanket, and to wear it traditionally, she would have pleated it and tucked it over her head, belted at the waist or pinned at the breast. She wrapped it around herself, over her rucksack, and felt the immediate effects of being cocooned by the thick wool.

She was a few miles from where she wanted to be, thankfully the expansion of Inverness had left some things untouched by the destruction of modernity. And this had been Granddad's favourite place.

 _Craigh na dun_.

He used to tell stories about it, had brought her and Bridget here at half-term holidays. Surrounded by woodlands, the small henge existed outside the knowledge of everyone except those who knew where it was. Ancient trees surrounded it now, but Granddad said at one time it must have commanded the attention of everyone who passed, on the top of a gentle hill, surrounded by plains and then snow-capped mountains. The mountains were still here, but the forest was now an old one, some of the trees themselves were protected. She was just thankful no official arsehole had decided to 'protect' the henge by making it unapproachable. It was hardly famous, Craigh na dun, it wasn't like Stonehenge, erected in the middle of Salisbury Plain where now pig-farms and the only direct link to Exeter and Plymouth wound past. Craigh na dun remained hidden, a secret part of the Highlands people kept to themselves if they wanted to keep enjoying it. No, there were no ropes cordoning off the area, no ticket-booths extorting people, no coach-loads piling into a car-park flattened from an area once heavily-wooded with ancient pines and chestnuts.

She climbed over a stile set into the old wall erected on one side of the narrow road, and started walking. She'd know this place anywhere. The Scottish Highlands had always filled her with a sense of awe; she had never been anywhere where the very stone of the mountains seemed to be holding its breath in anticipation – ageless and drenched in the mystery of time, Gaelic tradition and fairy-stories, she had always felt the sense, that prickling awareness of the fine hairs at the back of her neck rising, that an adventure was about to unfold. Whether she wanted it to or not.

After the premature deaths of her father, her French mother had moved them from the gentle hills and picturesque meadows and creeks of Hampshire to Scotland. On better terms with her father-in-law than her husband with his own father, Lillian and her flighty younger-sister Bridie had grown up down the lane from crackpot Granddad Fergus. When Lillian was fifteen, Maman had been diagnosed with cervical cancer – Lillian and her sister had both had the cervical jabs – and died within three months. It had been Lillian's first exposure to nursing, and Maman had been supportive if not a little fearful for her eldest daughter when Lillian had announced she would be joining the Army to train as a Combat Medical Technician when she finished her GCSEs.

Granddad had been supportive too, insisting Lillian, a steady introvert, a compartmentaliser with a no-nonsense attitude and a bedside manner that seemed to transcend everything around her, was perfectly suited to the vocation. It was in part due to Granddad that Lillian had had such an interest in medicine, and soldiers. A passionate historian of eighteenth-century Scotland, Granddad had helped raise Lillian and her sister on stories of fairies and kilted clansmen, witch-trials and failed uprisings, the songs of ancient Welsh bards, and being the recalcitrant old codger he was, had insisted on not only researching but _living_ his subject: Lillian, always steadier and more intuitive than Bridie, had indulged Granddad his leg-killing hikes collecting herbs and flowers, roots and berries for natural – read, _antiquated_ and _suspect_ – medicinal remedies. Holidays had been camping trips throughout the Highlands (Bridie being left behind with Maman to bake _chouquette_ and watch _Casablanca_ ) and almost survivalist, teaching her to navigate by the stars, light a fire with nothing but flint or sticks, to track and hunt. Tickle trout.

They had toured every eighteenth-century battlefield, Jacobean manor-house, ruins of once-ominous castles now inhabited by ivy and owls. She couldn't remember the names of the children in her primary-school class, or _anything_ she had taken GCSEs in beyond the History of Medicine module when she was fourteen, but the names and histories of notorious English captains in the Eighth Dragoon stationed at Fort William; the family-trees and medical ailments of particularly important lairds; early Hanoverian medical techniques and herbal remedies; the children of King George II; rural witch-trials and court etiquette of 1740s Versailles under Louis XV – Louis the Beloved – she remembered it all, Granddad's fascination becoming her own as she gazed at old paintings, kicked thistles through Culloden moor. During his bouts of extreme adherence to historical accuracy, she and Bridie had learned – with much sighing and exasperated ' _How long is_ this _phase going to last_?' how to cook the 1740s way. Lillian and her sister had never got along, _never_ – even as children they used to fight tooth and nail, stubborn and vicious as vixens, Maman used to say; but the one thing that had bonded them was elicit Indian takeaways full of spice and flavour, when hand-kneaded bannocks and kippers and oatcakes started to stick in their throats. But she would say her GCSE History coursework mark had been exceptional purely due to Granddad's influence in her researching efforts; she had focused on early eighteenth-century medicine.

Before computers had become widespread, Granddad had traced their family-tree back centuries to the 1720s, when King George I had granted an ancestor – by the same name as Granddad himself, Fergus Argyle Ewan Roy MacEwan – titles to legitimise his holding on a large swathe of land. A great house had been built, and their family had lived there until the 1920s – like _Downton Abbey_ , their family had come out of the Great War feeling the crunch, and the beautiful house had been partially vacated but turned into a museum of Scottish history. Granddad – who had served out his National Service in Singapore and Malaya in the 1950s (Lillian could imagine little more incongruous than her burly redheaded granddad, a fiery Scotsman to his core, amongst tanned Malaysians, eating _foreign_ food; he was a salted cold-porridge and kipper man) – had taken up the cause, refurbishing the great house, petitioning the Scottish National Trust for landmark and Listed status, aligning with top universities to really turn their ancestral home into something spectacular. Something for Scotland itself, glorifying their failed rebellions – Granddad said it was to honour their courage, their sacrifice; most of the Jacobite uprisings had been funded by the tenant-farmers and cottars scattered throughout the Highlands being victimised by the Redcoats and the Black Watch alike.

Well into his eighties, Lillian had believed Granddad would truly live forever. In a way, he would, in his books, in what he had left for others, in _her_. If not for him, she would never have fought her way through the immediate aftermath of sitting her GCSEs, losing her mother and joining the Army within the space of a few months – nor the depression following her husband's death, or the PTSD that had followed her second, worst tour of the Middle-East. Every time she had come home from the front-lines, after patching up men and women who had taken bullets, lost limbs, barely survived devastating bomb-blasts, and the odd everyday injuries like sprained joints, broken limbs, breakouts of venereal diseases and panic attacks, she had returned to Granddad. Her own husband Tommy had loved the charming – and eccentric – old man, despite the kippers and oatcakes. And his being, well, Scottish: Six Nations was always a tense affair, though she regretted Tommy never got to watch Japan slaughter the South African team in the Rugby World Cup last year. He would have laughed as uproariously as Granddad had; they'd had a fry-up for dinner complete with black pudding and fried bread, watching the game. It was one of the last memories she had of Granddad that didn't make her chest ache as if someone had clawed her heart out of it.

She had left the Army barely three months ago – after ten years, her late adolescence and most of her Twenties spent in the service of Her Majesty's Royal Army – and spent Christmas with Granddad for the first time in years. Bridie – _Bridget_ , as she had been christened by their Parisian mother – had brought along her _six_ children, Granddad's favourite people in the world to tease into a fever-pitch, playing pranks and telling the same jokes and stories he had kept Lillian enraptured by at the same age, tales full of ghosts and beautiful women and fairies and querulous kilted clansmen engaged in Highland ceremonies long lost to time. Granddad had always told the best stories – a talent he had expounded when he became one of the most eminent historians of eighteenth-century Scottish culture. All history was, he said, was _stories_. Flourishing with detail, full of evil villains and glorious heroes, gut-wrenching escapes and terrible executions – all told by the winning sides. Granddad's second-to-last book had researched The Forty-Five – the deciding defeat of the Jacobite cause – from the perspective of the losing side; the Highland clans. Difficult work, but Granddad's mind had showed no signs of frailty – no dementia, Alzheimer's, just the usual eccentricity she had loved him for all her life.

Spending time with her nieces and nephews before Bridie carted the entire lot of them off to New Zealand where her husband was being relocated for work, watching the Six Nations with Granddad and starting to proofread his latest book on the Frasers of Lallybroch for publishing, he had told her some stories he hadn't repeated since she was little, sometimes singing her favourite lullaby under his breath, to himself. Unlike so many of his generation, Granddad had not died _ill_ , not festering with cancer or broken hips; he'd been a great bear of a man all Lillian's life, strong as an ox, sharp as the katana his uncle had brought back from Burma after being released from a prison after the war, a cheerful, great-hearted man with a serious streak, patient and even-tempered. After telling him his final book was going into production, Granddad had gone to bed, and passed away peacefully in his sleep.

Before he had died, Granddad had insisted that before she dash off to apply to work for _Help for Heroes_ , helping to rehabilitate servicemen, she take a break. And without Granddad, well, what else could she do but drift aimlessly: Granddad had always been a constant in a life marked by loss. Daddy, then Maman, Tommy three years ago; but there was Granddad. Despite it being winter, Granddad had insisted that they drive around Scotland visiting old kirk-yards, battlegrounds, very early Georgian farmhouses famed for housing outlaws and fabulous paintings. While researching the Frasers of Lallybroch, Granddad had discovered a connection to their own family, and was determined to tell her story. Over much _Glen_ _Garioch_ at Christmas, Granddad had told the premise of his last book, and the only one he wouldn't let her proofread. He'd called it his _swansong_.

Some might think she'd had her arm twisted into spending time with her Granddad, that he had used guilt and a ticking clock to get her to stay, set aside her own life to cater to his. Lillian hadn't minded; she loved her granddad, adored the ease and companionability they shared, and knew that all he had ever truly wanted was to share the adventure with her. They had headed out onto the dual carriageway or motorways early, hand clapped over her eyes because Granddad insisted on driving, bombing down the right-hand lane closer to ninety miles-per-hour, overtaking obnoxious sports-cars and glossy _Range Rovers_ while he crooned along to the Gaelic folk-songs she regretted having given him for Christmas, volume turned right up, taking his eyes off the road to point out landmarks and give brief histories of the area. That was the adventure, spending time with Granddad, risking life and limb on the Scottish motorways – as if surviving four tours in the Middle East unscathed wasn't enough – eating bacon and eggs for breakfast and whisky for dinner. It was the adventure of delving into the past, researching a very colourful man and his staggering wife captured forever in three spectacular paintings in the listed Georgian farmhouse of Lallybroch in eastern Scotland. She had to confess, the portrait of James Fraser in full Scottish dress haunted her dreams.

"Bloody hell, it's cold!" she shivered, teeth chattering.

" _Doona swear_!" The voice chiding in her head sounded remarkably like Granddad, and her lips twitched as she imagined him reaching over to flick her ear with his strong fingernail. He'd never liked hearing his granddaughters swear, and she couldn't help feel a little miffed that he was never around to catch Bridie swear – and she used the C-word, a word Lillian loathed. " _You'll work up a good sweat climbing up this hill._ " In fact, she was; perhaps she hadn't needed the tartan after all.

Though his written English had been typical of his Oxford education, Granddad had had a quaint turn-of-phrase that was distinctly Scottish. Half the time, Tommy hadn't been able to differentiate between the English accent and Granddad speaking Gaelic (as he often did when he'd shared a bit too much _Glen Fiddich_ ). And in truth, after spending so much time away from him during service in the Army, Lillian always had to get used to Granddad's broad accent again. Now she wanted nothing more than to hear the broad Scottish rumble echoing cheerfully around Granddad's small house.

Through bracken and thorny bushes, picking her way through gnarled roots and listening to the soft crunch of the three inches of snow that still covered this part of the countryside, she smiled vaguely at the bright purple crocuses sprouting up through the pillowy, glittering whiteness, snowdrops all but carpeting thick swathes of the forest undergrowth, a few solitary daffodils bright in the starkness of the wintry forest, listening to the dainty chirps and flashes of crimson from tiny robins – her favourite – as they plucked at the earth with tiny beaks, sometimes lucky in finding a worm.

Finally, she came to it, breaking through the snaggly bushes and crunching snow and dead branches. The trees seemed to open up, a clearing almost perfectly circular, stopping at the juncture where the earth seemed to sweep upward, as if the trees wanted to stay away. The ageless stones were exactly as she remembered from childhood hikes with Granddad, pockets full of blackberries, legs covered in midge-bites, thirsty but exhilarated, and awed by the stones, listening cross-legged on the grass to Granddad tell stories so vividly she could believe she was _in_ them, sighing over the incomprehensible beauty of Gaelic songs, especially the one about Craigh na dun.

Sighing with relief, she tumbled to the base of one of the outer stones, uncaring of the snow beneath her bum, giving a shuddering yawn and wrapping her tartan closer around her. The stone guarded her from the wind but had its own chill, and she was glad of the thick wool. She had been determined to hike to Craigh na dun since Granddad's funeral – which she had attended alone but for a few of his old friends and those in his academic circle and publishing company. He had, after all, made them a bit of money when the BBC had picked up three of his historical books to turn into high-budget television series that aired after the Christmas season, prime spots on BBC1. The production company probably hadn't thought through inviting him as an expert; he had been hyper-critical of any historical inaccuracy, though the producers and actors she had met told her how much they had all respected and loved him for his devotion to authenticity, to _Scotland_.

She had wanted to come here because it was Granddad's place. Not his favourite place; that was Achmelvich Beach, or ' _Achadh Mhealbhaich_ ' as he called it. But this was where Granddad had started their adventures together, so many years ago when Daddy had died and Maman had seen fit to move them all closer to Granddad – she'd felt that it would do all of them some good, Granddad having lost wife and estranged son, his granddaughters would grow up without a strong paternal figure. A few weeks after they had moved, Granddad had packed her and Bridie into his Ford Anglia (it wasn't powder-blue, nor did it fly, to Bridie's disappointment) and bombed down the dual-carriageway. They had camped, and taken a long hike to reach this place. It was the first time Granddad had told them ancient Gaelic stories – Bridie, only four, had picked up the Gaelic quite easily, something Maman hadn't realised until one day, she had seen Bridie chasing a schoolmate round the garden with an axe, screaming in Gaelic – but this was a place almost holy to Lillian. Granddad's place, the place where he had carefully sown the seeds of their mutual love of history, carefully nurtured over the years by fairy-stories and hand-kneaded bannocks.

She had hoped that by coming here, she might hear Granddad's voice echoing off the stones, telling her stories, giving her advice. A way to banish the feeling of…of being utterly and irrevocably disconnected from the world around her. Tommy's death had been bad. But Granddad had helped her through it; work had helped her through it. Dedicating herself to saving lives on the front-lines – or to the cadets when she was rotated home. Now she had left the Army, she had no home but the occasional B Granddad was gone; and Bridie, whom she had never gotten along with until this past Christmas, had moved to the other side of the world.

Should she follow? She possessed basically what was in her rucksack. Granddad used to say, rather approvingly, that she was the least acquisitive person he had ever met; what she did own were sentimental things to her – her share of Maman's jewellery, the tartan-lined fur blanket Granddad had given her, his wedding-ring and the early Georgian pocket-watch he had insisted on bequeathing to her rather than the museum that was their ancestral home, the large, battered brown-leather book Granddad had given her at fourteen when, for part of her History GCSE coursework, he had started to help her consolidate all her knowledge of historical medicinal uses for herbs, fungi, tubers and flowers. The book, tucked in the bottom of her rucksack, was full of hand-painted illustrations and notes, some in Granddad's elegant handwriting, pressed flowers and herbs, preparation methods of tinctures and ointments, teas and cleansers. She carried her treasures with her, few that they were, and her memories. She didn't particularly care to hang on to _stuff_ , and would much rather wear her wedding-ring on a chain than dig a laminated photograph out of her pocket.

So did she take her rucksack, buy a ticket to Auckland and start afresh? She had heard New Zealand and Australia were desperate for trained nurses – she had the experience and qualifications, if not the conventional training. She was twenty-six years old, had already had a career and a marriage – rare, it hadn't ended by divorce. Lillian was still very much in love with her husband – felt his absence keenly, in a way she rarely had when they were married but separated by Army orders. Granddad had supported her decision to join the Army at sixteen; to get married at twenty; he had supported her whenever she announced she was being rotated out to the Middle-East. All he asked was that she not tell him the harrowing details of what she got up to out there, until she was safely at home drinking whisky with him.

What was she supposed to do? With absolutely nothing but her skills, and no-one – no Granddad, not even Bridie whom she thought…she thought she might _miss_ – what was she supposed to do? It was a disconcerting, hollow feeling, realising that she was the proverbial tree falling in a distant forest.

She sat there for she didn't know how long – her wristwatch had run out of battery and she had left it at Granddad's, aiming to take it to a jeweller's on her return; but Granddad's pocket-watch was inside her rucksack, nestled carefully in folds of suede and cotton. He'd kill her if she damaged the antique, but be happy she wasn't leaving it to collect dust in a cabinet. She had always loved his pocket-watch. Again, she ached for his advice, hollowed out and upset by his absence. She didn't think it was possible to miss anyone more than she did Tommy; but Granddad had been the greatest part of her life since she was nearly seven years old – in fact, it was her seventh birthday that Granddad had first promised to pass on his pocket-watch to her.

Lillian was a trained combat medic. She had served on the front lines in the Middle East for six of the last ten years; she wasn't unused to death, of horrifying injuries and the gut-wrenching realisation there was _nothing_ to be done when soldiers were brought in, mortally wounded. When the only thing to be done was give a soldier a gentle, fearless death. But that was her career, her vocation; she was dedicated to saving lives. Losing them, sometimes, came with the territory, especially when you were in the Army. But this was different; Granddad hadn't been a soldier – for a long time, at least – he hadn't been fighting Jihadists; he'd been _Granddad_ , her eccentric, burly, unquenchably cheerful (and flirtatious) Gaelic grandfather, an historian and lover of rugby, whisky and women. He had died peacefully in his sleep, leaving her world off-kilter ever since. He had been, and she had not realised it until after his death, the great gravitational pull that kept her from spinning out of orbit. After Maman had died, she had bonded even more strongly with Granddad; it was Bridie who went off the deep-end, only twelve when Maman had died. She had blamed Lillian for abandoning her when she joined the Army; she hadn't tolerated Granddad's eccentricities the way Lillian had indulged him.

But Lillian was always glad she had. He had been the most wonderful man she had ever known. She missed him like an amputated limb. She remembered the look of it, how it made her feel whole, but there was no way to grow it back, and no prosthetic replica could ever properly take its place. She sniffed, wiping her nose on her handkerchief, and pushed the tears away before they could fall. Chapped cheeks from saltwater and wind wasn't a good way to go.

Finding no answers on the wind, she sighed, glancing around. The henge seemed frozen in time, without the noise-pollution of modern-day Scotland, the nearest road set several miles away, it was picturesque, ageless and, to her, fragile because of it. Marked with mystery, but marking _what_? A great Highland king's burial mound? Some ancient gathering-place? Granddad hadn't known, but he'd told stories, and as she climbed to her feet, dusting snow off her gloves, she tilted her head, watching the largest, strangely fractured stone, set as it was in the perfect central point amongst the ring of smaller, foreign stones – foreign, in that the glistening stone they were made of wasn't native to this part of Scotland, or even the island of Britain.

Granddad used to tell stories about Craigh na dun. Fairy-stories and disappearances, people displaced in time. She couldn't remember the words of the ancient Gaelic songs, or even hum the tune, but she remembered the spine-tingling sense of anticipation, of _magic_ , that she would forever associate with Granddad's stories about it.

She gave a wan smile, approaching the largest stone. A giant, perhaps, had eons ago broken the stone lengthways in two, and set both halves atop this tiny hidden dune until they nearly touched. It was through this fissure the wind whistled, seeming to scream. She sighed, thinking of Granddad, and pressed her palm to the stone in goodbye.

* * *

 **A.N.** : Please review.


	2. Redcoat

**A.N.** : To Queen Ares, StephLauren and MeliaAlexander, thank you all for your reviews. This chapter is for you.

* * *

 **A Mhaighdean Bhan Uasal**

 _02_

* * *

" _It's a dangerous business, stepping out your door. If you don't keep your feet, there's no knowing where you might be swept off to_ …"

* * *

During her second tour of the Middle East – Iraq, to be specific, the first time around – she had been stationed on the front-lines. Travelling anywhere was always a question of odds being stacked in one's favour, one false step and a mine detonated, taking legs or killing you outright; she had been the first point of contact to deal with a lot of such injuries. One day, a bomb went off only paces away – the sensation was the closest she could come to describing what she experienced when she touched that stone. The full-body shock, the impact of the bomb-blast throwing her body, the weightlessness and the churning, evaporating feeling in her stomach, seeming to be suspended in mid-air and in time itself, everything happening too quickly for the senses to notice let alone make sense of. Dazed and disoriented, she had woken with ringing ears, the Iraqi sun blazing down unforgivingly, the tang of copper and smoke and burning-flesh thick on the heavy air, superficial cuts and one incredibly fine bruise. Two men had been killed in the blast, and one of her friends had lost a leg. She had remained blissfully unscathed – until, returning to England, PTSD had hit her like a tank.

No bomb had detonated, her ears weren't ringing, but she could neither explain nor really remember _what_ had happened beyond the realisation that _something_ had happened. The screaming rocks, the flickers of – what, memory? Flashes of colour and incomprehensible scenes ripped from her sight before her brain could process them – and that suspended weightlessness, the impossible pressure of being hurtled through the air without moving anywhere…

She groaned, blinking up at a silvery grey sky full of ominously black clouds limned by the weak Scottish sun. _They_ hadn't been on the horizon, but then the weather changed quickly in Scotland, and she sighed, hauling herself upright (wondering when she had fallen over, and grimacing at the state of the contents of her rucksack if she had dropped particularly heavily) considering paying for another night at the B &B rather than risk a night under canvas with those storm-clouds rumbling in.

Pulling herself upright, she sniffed in the cold, and her senses prickled in awareness, her mind taking seconds to catch up. The temperature seemed to have dropped at least ten degrees. And the light was different. Not because of the picturesque silver-edged black clouds obscuring the sun's rays. It was barely three o'clock, and she frowned – it was impossible…the forest…it had… _gone_ … To one side of Craigh na dun, there it was, trees curling out of sight up to the snow-kissed peaks. _Young_ trees. But otherwise her view of the snow-dusted plain was unimpeded. The landscape was not the one she had hiked through to get to the henge.

There was nothing blatantly obvious, no signage, there had been nothing but that briefest sensation of being caught in a bomb-blast, soundless, helpless and disoriented. Her instincts, honed by Granddad and sharpened like a weapon by Army training and multiple tours of hostile terrain in the Middle East, started piecing together clues. A soldier's ultimate instinct was survival and, if found alone in unknown territory, to be duly cautious – use the senses. They were all animals, Granddad used to say; they had evolved into the apex predator through instincts honed for survival. The three F's, she had dubbed them; the urge to fight, to flee, and to fuck. Survive, and propagate the species.

She was still within Craigh na dun. But the forest had thinned as if it had never overgrown the hillside. The drastic change in the weather, and…the quiet… It wasn't just the looming clouds threatening a storm: the little robins and blue-tits she had listened to had now fallen silent. A silent forest was an ominous one.

Had she hit her head? Had someone attached her? She felt no side-effects of having been drugged, her body was strong, no pains anywhere, her head didn't give her any reason to suspect concussion… She hadn't eaten any special fungi that might have brought on hallucinations…and even if she had, why envision a forest disappeared into three inches of snow? The stones of Craigh na dun themselves were unchanged. She didn't think they ever would. The forest that would grow up around them would shelter them from the elements.

 _Would_. Had not yet grown. Not even a sapling.

A trickling icy sensation shivered down her spine, the wind whistling through those two central stones, and in the back of her mind, Granddad's low rumbling voice sang the song, the eerie one, the Gaelic fable of a woman transported through time. Had she fallen asleep? She had to be dreaming…but she couldn't ever remember dreaming so vividly. She didn't have the imagination – Bridie was the fiction-glut. Harry Potter, the Walking Dead, Vampire Diaries – she loved anything that provoked her imagination. Lillian, she was the Army medic, with all that implied; disciplined, calm under pressure, too busy to ever daydream.

And too used to the sound of gunfire not to duck down to a crouch, body tucked close, head down but eyes sharp, wary. She knew it was the final stretch of the roe deer doe-stalking season, which traditionally ended 31st March. But it was just past three p.m.; stalking happened at dawn or dusk when the deer were more active. And roe deer lived in _forests_ ; only a young, orphaned fawn might venture out into the open plains as surrounded the dune.

There was no Army base nearby; this wasn't land on which the military ran training drills. She would know.

And there wasn't a road for miles to hear an exhaust backfire. Besides, she knew a gunshot when she heard one. And she was easily visible to anyone. In the back of her mind, she knew this was not the same Criagh na dun she had hiked to. Keeping low to the ground and glad of the tartan around her for camouflage, she melted into the trees. The shot seemed to have come from the open ground, not the trees. And if it wasn't stalkers after roe deer, then – what? – What had she accidentally witnessed, if only audibly?

Young trees muted the wind, and snow crunched softly underfoot, and she became aware of the ringing clang of metal, or hoarse male voices shouting a now-defunct language she recognised only from Granddad's stories. Into the woods, she glanced around – up a tree was a better place to hide, Katniss had had the right idea, but they were too young, the branches far too slender to bear her weight. Down through the rocky, uneven ground, glad of her leather gloves to save her hands the scrapes of jagged, razor-sharp crags and boulders frozen over with bracken and deceptive moss. Tucking herself into the gnarled roots of a tree in a ledge hidden from view from above, she became aware of her heart-beat thumping against her ears. Her breathing was calm, though, and her training had kicked in as it always had. The tension she had felt in the woods, the coil pulled taut ready to spring back, exploded: those hoarse voices again, shouting in Scottish Gaelic, close enough that when she peered around the frozen ferns, she could see two – three – dark bearded men in kilts and armed to the teeth with broadswords, dirk and antiquated pistol, hurrying past on the path she had just jumped from. One paused long enough to shout something in Gaelic, firing the pistol in a flash: she wondered at the recoil he seemed not to feel, even more than the hollowness in her stomach that came with the realisation that he had fired live ammunition.

From the Gaelic, and Granddad's insistence on her learning her weapons history, she would hazard a guess those men were made up to look like eighteenth-century highlanders – a fleeting thought further compounded by the appearance of two bewigged men in the striking scarlet uniform that every American child at least knew on sighed as a 'Redcoat'. A soldier of the English Army, and by the cut of the coat Lillian would say the early 1700s.

Had to be. Gaelic and tartan were both outlawed in the Highlands after the failed uprising of 1745. The end of the clans, of the proud Highlander way of life steeped in ancient tradition.

In the space of a second, Lillian registered all of this and more, the stones and Granddad's songs murmuring in the back of her mind – a second, but long enough for one of the Redcoats to pause as he ran headlong, aim his musket _at her_ and fire without hesitation. Snow and frozen earth exploded a foot from her face, making her jerk back her head, stifling a gasp. Bastard just shot at her! So well-concealed – _her hair_! With a glare, she grabbed her hair in her first – bright, glowing, unavoidable _red_. She was a huge ginger in the middle of a frozen wood, as visible as the Redcoats she had always disdained for their choice of dye.

If nothing else, the Redcoat's complete lack of any hesitation in aiming his musket to shoot – to _kill_ – gave her a clarity that settled nerves jarred by being shot at, the bemused delirium she seemed to be floating in; with a certainty that could not be shaken, she _knew_ …

Granddad's songs, the stones… A bloody _musket-ball_ a foot away from her head… Something unexplainable had happened. The stones. Those two fractured great stones in the centre of the henge. Fractured. A schism. A _crack_ … " _A crack in the skin of the universe. Two parts of space and time that should never have touched, pressed together_ …"

 _Too much Doctor Who_ , she thought. She was not from Gallifrey, there was no such thing as time-travel, and as of her last medical she had but the one heart, nor had any eccentric men with noisy tools approached her.

Was this her mind fracturing? Had the combination of loss and a staggering case of PTSD broken her? Imagining men of the eighteenth century waging out ambushes in the Highlands – well, that was Granddad's influence. To keep him with her, because she couldn't handle his not being part of her life anymore…

Why would her mind orchestrate any scenario, particularly with her history, in which she was being shot at by soldiers of a bygone age? The rational, soldierly part of her mind, the part keeping her alive on instincts honed from training, muttered that at least it wasn't the Somme. And if this _was_ real, as the biting drizzle now splattering through the unguarded of the branches freezing the snow to ice seemed to indicate, well, better a handful of redcoats and kilted Scots engaged in guerrilla cattle-raids than the trenches.

 _At least there's plenty o' whisky_ , Granddad's voice said cheerfully.

It could not have been more than a minute, hidden in the tree-roots, between the shot being fired at her and moving off in pursuit of either safety or higher ground, but the Lillian who left her hiding-spot was Corporal Egan, highly capable front-lines CMT. Instinctual, brave and uncompromising. There was no room for doubt: she had to accept the impossible and run with it.

Gritting her teeth, she regretted her red hair as it swayed in a curtain past her face, stepping carefully, sliding down a gentle hill pockmarked with slick, lethally-sharp boulders. Glad of her leather gloves and the icy drizzle stinging her exposed face and covering her tracks in the melting snow, she plunged on, hastily pulling her hair into a loose plait she couldn't tie up. But it was out of her face, and by the sounds of it the rucks with those men had moved on. She could still hear them, though, and took care to make as little nose as possible trekking through increasingly wild, beautiful terrain, until she lost her footing on a deceptively solid-looking patch of mossy earth – stumbling, feeling a slight twinge in her ankle, she started to hurtle down the slick bank, quickly and direct down the side of the hill on her arse, legs jarring as she tried to dig in her heels, hands snatching at lichen and dead ferns and gnarled roots, catching her breath with a gasp of relief three feet from a jagged outcrop of rock that spread and grew before her, guarding what she could hear was the river she was sure Granddad had taken her to, teaching her to tickle trout.

She had her bearings, at least, knew this stretch of the river featured a good amount of cover from natural caves. Panting slightly, she groaned, taking stock in the sudden stillness. Raw arse and the backs of her thighs smarted, but she doubted the skin had broken, protected by her leather trousers; her Army-issue boots had supported her ankle, preventing a sprain. She glanced up around her, eyes flitting over the messy tracks left behind by her descent. Who knew her arse could cause so much damage? Luckily the rain was working in her favour to melt the snow, eradicating obvious signs that a person had clambered – mostly slid – down the side of the hill. A Redcoat wouldn't know the signs; Highlanders were _part_ of this land, they grew up hunting and tracking – and _fighting_. Despite the cold, she would rather be agile than warm: she stripped off her _earasaid_ , halving it and rolling it neatly with the swiftness of habit, clamping it under her arm as she covered the distance to level terrain, unhooking one strap of her leather rucksack, pausing only long enough to buckle her tartan to her rucksack. Fumbling in one of the outer pockets for a hairband, she ducked hastily into the shelter of a rocky outcrop dripping into a picturesque, gurgling river-bend.

She buckled the pocket, tucking a few hair-pins into her trouser-pocket, and grunted at unexpected impact. Something sturdy – and more vibrantly scarlet than her hair – caught her.

"And what have we here?" The hands that clamped around her upper-arms were like steel bands through her flimsy shirt. Her immediate impression was of a wig, cold dark eyes and cruel lines etched either side of thin, unforgiving lips. There was a nasty, taunting smile on them that did not reach the eyes. With a jolt of recognition, Lillian wondered suddenly if she had been drawn into one of Granddad's history-books. Did this apparition add more weight to the mental argument that this was a dream brought on by a mental fracture combined with Granddad's research? For here he was, the "scourge of the North" as Granddad growled whenever he had brought up Jonathan "Black Jack" Randall during discussions of his research.

For she _knew_ this was Jonathan Randall, esquire. She had seen the face before. Many of Granddad's published works had specialised on Scottish history between the years 1688 and 1746, and she remembered proofreading his chapters of research on particular historical figures such as the Duke of Sandringham – politically wily, rather effeminate, friends to local lairds, a lover of beautiful things (especially male), a _suspected_ Jacobite and patron of a nauseatingly cruel English captain of the Eighth Dragoons stationed at Fort William. Captain Jonathan "Black Jack" Randall.

During his exhaustive research into the Duke, a rather enigmatic figure, Granddad had gone off on a tangent researching the captain, sourcing a rather fine portrait in a stately home in Sussex. Lillian remembered the portrait; they had toured the great house together and had scones in the tea-shop while Granddad had picked the brains of the resident historian in charge of maintaining the estate for the National Trust. What had struck her wasn't the bold uniform, gold buttons polished until they glowed, or the beauty of the artist's technique; it was the cold, hard lines of cruelty etched either side of the mouth like carved stone. The artist had been uncompromisingly accurate with his portrayal of the Captain – who now stood before her eyeing her like a cat watched a wounded bird – a bird _it_ had wounded, and intended to hurt again.

Only, she wasn't wounded.

"I'll thank you to remove your hands, Captain Randall," she said coolly, hyper-aware of Randall's closeness and the bruising grip he maintained on her arms. He blinked, for a moment taken-aback, even taking a half-step back in surprise. But he squeezed tighter, setting his jaw when her eyes didn't widen in alarm, and gentled his hold.

"You have me at a disadvantage, madam," he said politely, but it didn't diminish the glacial quality of his eyes, boring into hers. "I do not seem to know you."

"No. And yet I know you," she said honestly, staring unflinchingly into those black eyes. "One cannot travel these parts without stories of Black Jack. None at all palatable." Again, true. All she truly remembered of Randall, staring him straight in the face, flesh and blood and bruisingly real, was reading enough of Granddad's research to diagnose him a sexual sadist. His taste for floggings had been marked, and his superior officers had made notes about his conduct toward prisoners and women left alone in his presence that had made the hairs on the back of her neck stand on end. Even in one of the pubs in Inverness, his likeness was pinned above the dartboard, the paper so pockmarked by darts as to be tatters of fragile, cigarette-stained paper, but the uniform was identical, if not the jaw. Black Jack had been notorious in this area for a reason.

 _Was_ notorious.

"One is unlikely to hear Valentine sonnets travelling the Highlands, madam," Randall said calmly. "Your name?"

"Yes, I have one," Lillian said calmly.

With an alarming swiftness, he changed. The pleasant mask concealing his features disappeared, replaced with something ugly, something predatory and brutal. Cruel. The grip on her arms tightened painfully, but Lillian stood her ground, only narrowing her eyes in a dangerous glare. She was not some defenceless farmer's daughter; she was a Corporal in the Royal Army Medical Corps.

She would bet _her_ military training was far superior to his.

During her training, and her experiences amassed over four long tours in the Middle East, Lillian had come to learn a lot about herself. Chiefly, that fear did not shut her down. It woke her up, lit a fire in her. She was her bravest and most clear-headed when she was most afraid. She hadn't risen to the rank of Corporal for no reason: she took hideous situations and glided through them with a serenity most people found unearthly. Straight-shouldered, back straight as a pin, she raised her chin, looking at Randall through her eyelashes in her most disdainful, unconcerned look.

"You must think me the fool," he hissed, his voice low, dangerous. Unyielding. Used to giving and having orders obeyed without question. Preying on others; she had known officers like him, who fed off fear, _bullies_. And she was sure none dared stand up to this man. The English Army hadn't been what Her Majesty's Royal Army was today. In 2016, she meant. "You'll be well advised to tell me exactly who you are and why you are here."

She didn't try to jerk away; knew he held her gripped tight to him, leering down at her for a reason. She lifted her chin, smoothing her features to an expression of complete disinterest, boredom, even, and levelled a look at those black eyes. "Sir, you would be well advised to remove your hands."

"I think I'd prefer to keep them where they are," Randall said quietly. "In fact, I believe I've a rather fine set of shackles that would suit you well, madam. They would match those fine earrings you wear. A gift, perhaps, from your patron?"

Her mother's, actually. She had forgotten about them – 24-carat gold, dainty hoops set with tiny brilliant-cut diamonds, and large pearl drops. The Duchess of Cambridge had a similar pair. She knew what he implied, that she was a wealthy man's mistress – or more likely simply a whore. She gave him a gentle smile. "I buy my own jewellery, sir."

"An Englishwoman who speaks like a lady and yet scrabbles about the Highlands in leather breeches does not afford her own jewels, madam."

"Does she not?" Lillian sighed, tsking softly under her breath, relaxing her body. With the ruckus going on around them, renewed musket shots, Gaelic curses and pitiable screams shivering on the frigid air, Lillian was where she had been more often than not the last decade – in a warzone. No matter how small-scale. And she knew she had to get away from this man, this Captain of Dragoons, the notorious sadist Black Jack Randall. The noise was a reminder of not where but _what_ she was, a reminder of what she was capable of. She was more than equipped to handle this man – she just needed a little space. Lull him into a false sense of her complete helplessness – and he would be hers. Shackles? She didn't think so. She smiled wistfully. "I wish someone might have told me."

"You will tell me why you are here," he growled.

"To make record of the local stories," she said gently, opening her eyes a little wider in feigned innocence. "Before those in His Majesty's Army eradicate anyone who could tell them." His eyes narrowed.

"Think you anyone cares to hear the grunted stories of a people destined to ruin?"

"I'd wager some asked the same of Troy," Lillian blinked. Classical Civilisation was one of the GCSE classes she had enjoyed, alongside her History and science lessons. And she knew the mark of a man's education was how well-acquainted he was with Greek and Latin. "Were you not tutored on your classics, sir? Odysseus and the Cyclops, Medusa and her withering glare? The Furies, who punished evil-doers." She let her eyes bore into his, challenging. "I wonder at the Gaelic equivalent. Given the fearsome nature of mortal Scottish women alone, I'd hazard a guess even you might second-guess crossing them."

"Perhaps, madam, and yet _you_ are not one of them," Randall said quietly, his hold on her arms loosening. In surprise, maybe?

She gave him a sweet, lulling smile. "Aren't I?"

Her training kicked in, with the element of – not surprise, complete and total _shock_. Moving swiftly and leonine, unencumbered by uniform or pack, she first spat full in his eyes, moving methodically and using the benefit of her size and strength, her knowledge of anatomy and the jujitsu and boxing training Granddad had insisted she learn as well as the military training, to jab, strike, punch, daze and finally kick her foe into submission, sprawling onto the snow-covered mud at the river's edge, moaning and lingering on the border of consciousness.

She rolled her shoulders, feeling the strain of unusual activity on her body after only three months home from Iraq. Well-honed but out of practice, she wasn't sure she had the strength to inflict maximum injury – but if she wasn't bigger or stronger than her opponent, she knew how to optimise her strength and strike strategically. At the very least, by the sight of him alone, she would hazard an educated guess that Captain Jonathan Randall now suffered from ringing ears, a broken, dislocated jaw, three cracked ribs and four broken, a traumatised solar-plexus, his diaphragm haemorrhaging. It would take him as little as six weeks to recover physically. The shock of being injured in such a way – by a _woman_ – well…that would take a lot longer for him to reconcile.

 _Yes_ , she thought, peering at him as she panted lightly, feeling warm for the exertion, resting her hands on her knees to look down at the damage she had inflicted. Definitely a dislocated jaw, with a possible break if the swelling was any indication, she saw with some satisfaction. Randall stilled, eyes closed; he had fallen unconscious. She cocked her head, reached down and unsheathed his sword, spinning and hurling it bodily into the river. _Bloody heavy_ , she thought. She'd never held a sword before, had new respect for Jon Snow wielding one weighed down under all those furs. She preferred a knife.

Glancing down at the unconscious heap at her feet, she sighed, deciding to root through the pockets. _Waste not_ , she thought with a tiny grim smile, wondering whether she might come to regret having beaten him so badly. A small coin-purse, she didn't stop to inspect its contents but tucked it into her trouser-pocket and turned to leave, stooping to retrieve her rucksack lying on the ground, the leather stained with the rain.

A twig snapped behind her; she whirled, but felt a sharp, fiery pain in the back of her skull, and had the fleeting sensation of falling from a great height before impact, and darkness shrouded her mind. Her last panicked thought; she didn't know which to hope for, Scottish rebels or the Redcoats.

* * *

 **A.N.** : Lillian's looks are inspired by Léa Seydoux. I love the almost _sombre_ beauty she has, it's subtle and commanding. And I've a picture on Pinterest of a girl with the most amazing red hair. I've made a board, 'Sassenach,' if anyone wants a browse.


	3. Bound

**A.N.** : I was going to write this all from Lillian's point of view, but WillowStar23 wrote a comment that made me think about writing this chapter from another perspective.

I just watched _A Royal Affair_ (2012) with Mads Mikkelsen (I _so_ would! Ever since he was Tristram in _King Arthur_!) and Alicia Vikander. She seems to be popping up everywhere now, and I'm glad. But the costumes in this film, set in the 1770s, are simply divine – and not _that_ different from English/French court costume in the 1740s. The cut of dresses stayed pretty much the same, except for minor details, for a century. There are two particular gowns Queen Caroline wears that would be stunning on Lillian.

* * *

 **A Mhaighdean Bhan Uasal**

 _03_

* * *

He'd nary seen a _man_ move that way. A female? Never. He'd never seen a person fight the way she had, sharp, powerful jabs, slaps ringing with strength, forceful punches, using her entire body in a kick that sent a grown man sprawling. Tall, she was, and he'd seen her body writhe with lean muscle beneath the beguiling softness of her curves, but muscle alone never determined the winner in a fight. He'd watched her, squaring off against Randall, a man few would look in the eye let alone taunt in such a bored manner as she had. Disdainful, almost idle, unconcerned and lulling in her charm, he did not think she even knew to use her beauty, her face had shown no feminine guile, no fluttering eyelashes, leading half-smiles, blushes. No, her looks seemed carved of stone – an immaculate stone, the curves softened and lush – but stone nonetheless, immovable, stern. He'd found himself wondering if she'd ever truly been a _girl_. It was a woman stood toe-to-toe with Randall, by appearances completely unaffected by even a glimmer of fear he thought she should have the good sense to feel, if she knew Randall's reputation at all.

She had moved with the precision and power of a well-wielded claymore. Lethal and targeted to deliver maximum injury with as little effort and risk as possible. She'd started with a dirty trick, distracting and blinding the Captain, but the way she had struck and anticipated his reactions spoke to the trained warrior in him, and Murtagh had made the decision, not believing her story of travelling the Highlands to record fairy-stories any more than he believed her to be a whore despite the jewels dangling from her ears.

Better to wield a claymore than have one pointed at him in the dark.

Whoever the lass was, she was no Scotswoman, and yet there was tartan rolled beneath her leather pack. She spoke like a lady, and could handle herself alone in the wild, against men bigger and more powerful than her.

Aye, better to have her with _him_.

Silent and nimble as a squirrel, he took hold of the handle of his dirk, freeing the blade clamped between his teeth to leave his hands to grip the rain-slickened rocks, and crept up behind the young woman, who was pocketing the captain's gold.

He caught her before she hit the ground, immediately regretting knocking her unconscious. Lass was heavier than she looked, and tall for all that. Uncomfortable, carrying her over his shoulder, but he managed. Got her arranged in the saddle and lashed her pack to his pony before hopping up, manoeuvring through the woodland as the noise of the strumush died down.

Dougal had never been wise like his older-brother; aye, it did them all good to have a bit of sport, plucking the livestock from Mackenzie neighbours – especially with the longstanding feud only _he_ felt he was entitled to carry against Ellen… But, even better, to fire a few shots at the Redcoats. Got their blood up, and it had been a long, cold winter. The few specks of colour they had seen were the flickers of red-breasted robins, bright daffodils; nothing compared to the brilliant shimmer of the lass's copper hair. Brighter even than young Jamie's curling locks.

It was her colouring, and the lass's height that had struck him. His mind had seized on one face, long gone from his life but forever locked in his memory. Ellen. Bright grey eyes fringed with dark lashes, pretty and full of fire, gentled by her natural sweetness, shy to show itself but awing when it did. She'd given that gift to Jamie, if not headstrong little Janet.

Sorry excuse for a witness he was; he'd lost the lad. Angered by Rupert firing that shot, he'd seen Jamie make a break for it, called home to his father's land. The first time he'd been so close in years, poor lad. Still, would do him no good to saunter round Fraser lands with his tartan and his flaming hair, not with the Watch making themselves regular guests at Jenny's board. He could have split Dougal's skull for filling the boy's head with that nonsense about Jenny. Everything he had to deal with, Jamie didn't need _that_ weighing on him. He already carried far too much guilt for a lad so young.

He held the reins loosely in one hand, eyes alert and senses sharpened as he led the pony away. The lads had driven the cattle on when the Redcoats had ambushed them; they'd have the beasts back at Leoch in good time. If Jamie was hurt, they were in for it. His lips twitched, the lass's head lolling forward, a wave of perfume tickling his nose as her hair blew into his face. Randall wasn't likely to be in any position to give Jamie trouble the next few months. He felt a surge of affection for the lass, reliving the memory of the sickening crunch of Black Jack's jaw breaking, sprawling in the mud at her feet.

Anyone who would knock Black Jack Randall on his arse as soundly as this lass was alright in his eyes.

* * *

The bumping, rolling gait rocked her into consciousness, more even than the stinging rain biting her bare face. The back of her head pounded, and she let out a sighed, " _Shit_ ", raising a hand to her head – blinking, disoriented, and bemused when she managed to club herself in the lip, hands _bound_ with rope. She stared at them, confused. It was an out-of-body experience, staring at the knotted rope, completely disoriented as to _how_ her hands had come to be bound at the wrist, _why_ her head pounded with each roll of the enormous animal between her legs – a _horse_. Confusion. Her limbs felt heavy, she was dazed, and memory took a moment to filter back to her bruised mind. Gunshots, an ambush of kilted men, a Redcoat captain sprawled in the mud. Bludgeoned from behind, being caught by something strong before she could hit the ground.

Her body snapped to attention, rigid, bristling, realisation settling in, senses sharpening despite a possible concussion. Someone had knocked her out, jumping her from behind. That someone sat behind her, the smell of unwashed male an aroma so pungent a freight-train hitting her wouldn't have been as powerful. Briefly, she took account of her situation: she could hear only one set of hooves clip-clopping gently on a muddy track through snow-covered meadows trimmed with picturesque flint walls and snow-speckled trees whipping and snapping in a gale, glowing in the light of a dying sun trying vainly to peek through the billows of black clouds tumbling overhead. It was a strange mixture of ominous gloom and brilliance, enchanting and surreal; the dying light of sunset showed there was nothing for miles around except a small, low cottage up ahead, several sleek horses huddled together against the elements.

So. Hands bound. Astride a horse. Something very solid and very masculine pressed to her back, a thin arm corded with muscle beneath the grubby, stinking linen of his shirt wrapped around her waist to hold the reins with an easy, familiar grip. A solitary cottage; signs of more men within it, if the bridled horses were an indication. A dozen, she counted. No, eight. Nine including the man behind her. She'd take the odds of one man alone in the rain against nearly a dozen in an enclosed space. Whip-quick, she twisted in the saddle, plunging her elbow sharply into a thickly-bearded face. The momentum tilted her sideways, though, and she yelped and started to plunge backwards over the side of the horse – with a grunt, the small man whipped back his head, clamped a hand on her arm and hefted her bodily back into the saddle.

"We'll have no more o' that, lass," he said quietly, in a low, strangely pleasant voice thrumming with gentle authority. Blood trickled from his nose, and he narrowed beetle-dark eyes under a heavy brow as she glared at him.

"You'll have _more_ of that if you don't untie me and let me go," Lillian promised in a low growl, eyes lancing to the cottage with a prickle of unease. The sheer lack of basic sanitation displayed by his grimy face and filthy linen shirt confirmed what she had started to accept, simply for her own survival, as soon as the musket-ball had landed a foot from her head. She was not in the twenty-first century.

"Safer tae keep ye tied," he said, again using that pleasant, understated voice. He was a Scotsman, a blind-woman would have known it. She didn't need to see the grubby kilt, the heather-grey bonnet, feel the handle of a dirk digging into her hip to know.

"Safer for you."

"As she glanced over her shoulder, the small man's lips, partially concealed by a thick swathe of rich chestnut beard, twitched. "Aye." Her head throbbed with each step of the horse's rolling gait, the ropes around her wrists didn't burn physically as much as branding into her mind that she wanted them _off_. Luckily she still wore her leather gloves; they would provide better grip on the ropes, and had kept her hands warm. Her blouse was soaked through, though, and she was glad of her leather trousers – they were always a bit hit-and-miss, wearing them; in a warm venue she sweated unbearably, but in the cold they were wonderful insulation.

"Who jumps an unarmed woman from behind?" Lillian grumbled, resting her head in her upturned hands as much as the ropes would allow, as much to cradle her head as to see up-close in the gathering dark what kind of knot he had used.

"One as saw you best Black Jack."

"So it was Captain Randall, then," Lillian sighed disinterestedly. She could never have believed her mind had such a rich imagination. If she was going to have a psychotic break and imagine herself in another time and place, she should have envisioned Ned Stark. She sighed, eyeing the cottage as the man clicked his tongue, the horse responding to the sound more than a gentle tug of the reins, and Lillian winced as her head throbbed at the motion. With a soft grunt, the man slipped down from the saddle with the dexterity of a squirrel.

Compactly-built, she doubted there was an ounce of fat on his body, lean and wired with muscle that came, not from a gym, but from hard-living. He had a heavy brow, dark chestnut hair falling lank into his face, and a thick beard, face smeared with mud and something with a suspicious crimson tint, but looking down into his eyes, there was none of that malice she remembered in a flash of her meeting with Black Jack. He offered thin-fingered hands cobwebbed with fine white scars, and she rather inelegantly plonked down from the saddle with a strangled yelp, and he steadied her, strong as tempered steel, as her feet slid on the slick mud, her head immediately starting to spin. Dizzy, she inhaled, dispelling a wave of nausea as she exhaled slowly. She squinted down at the man with a glare.

"Was it necessary to hit me quite that hard?" she asked on a small moan, the back of her head throbbing.

"No' in the habit of striking lasses," the man said offhandedly, tying the reins to a post where the other horses were tethered.

"I should hope _not_ ," Lillian said thickly, head in her bound hands. "Well, don't think to get into the habit of hitting _me_."

"Woulda. You dinna fight as any lass I've ever seen," the man said, and Lillian raised her chin, a gentle smirk twitching her lips. A hit of confidence thrummed through her, delicious, and enough to make her think better of trying to take on this innocuous-looking man. She'd only be running on foot with absolutely no cover – she couldn't get back on that horse and make it move any more than she could fly a plane. With a steely grip that brought Black Jack Randall to mind, he took hold of her elbow, guiding her to the door of the cottage. "In."

"You're all charm – _argh_!" He had taken the threshold in his stride; a head taller, Lillian let out a strangled grunt as her forehead glanced off the lintel with a decisive _thunk_. She let out a sigh, stars bursting in her eyes, shaking her head balefully and grimacing. "You're _really_ enjoying this, aren't you?" Raising her bound hands again, she ducked into the cottage, palm rubbing her forehead. She'd have bruises the size of ostrich-eggs come morning.

The immediate sensation of being blinded unsettled her – fragrant (and not altogether pleasant) smoke hit her like a wall; she had been a kid when smoking in public places was banned, still vaguely remembered her eyes tearing up whenever Granddad took them to the pub for Sunday-lunch, having to leave the hall at a wedding because of her coughing. The _smells_ that hit her…it was almost like being back in Iraq or Afghanistan, that musky, earthy, rich scent of blood, of muck, of unwashed bodies and _male_. All but the damp; that was different. So was the dark. Even out in the middle of nowhere, tank or truck lights kept everything glowing with HD-clarity. She had noticed the windows – well, holes in the walls – were tightly shuttered. So passing Redcoats couldn't make out the cottage in the distance. All heat came from the large hearth at one end of the cottage, spreading its tendrils of warmth over the entire structure, hitting her like a wave. She hadn't noticed how cold she was, until she stood now dripping in the dark with her hands bound, frowning bemusedly at the half-dozen heavy-set man armed to the teeth, all staring at her.

"Where on earth did you get _her_?" Rupert asked carefully, eyes on the tall lass as Murtagh drew the door shut tight behind her. Half their original number stood about, filthy but relaxed from the fight, in good spirits. He frowned at young Jamie, bare-armed on a stool by the hearth. Crimson stained his linen shirt, and even as his eyes adjusted to the dark he saw his shoulder was out of joint. He was a damned fool sometimes, young and reckless – desperate to get home for the first time in years.

"Found her in the woods," Murtagh answered casually, reaching up to pinch his nose. She hadn't drawn blood but his eyes had filled with tears when she'd struck him; lass had sharp elbows, and packed a wallop. She had good instincts, he'd give her that.

And she showed no sign of fear, surrounded by large men exhilarated from the fight, lusty at the sight of her appearance, white shirt soaked through, legs encased in supple, incredibly fine black leather. She lifted her chin in a casual, almost catlike movement, sweeping her sheet of soaked red hair over one shoulder, settling her eyes on Rupert, Ian and Angus all staring at her leather-clad legs with a slightly-arched eyebrow that seemed to say, _Avert your eyes, sirs, or I shall gouge them out for ye_.

He was surprised, and interested, that she showed so little concern for the nine fully-grown adult males strapped to the teeth with weapons – claymores, dirks, the odd Lochaber, each of them carrying a pistol or two – and all outweighing her by a hundred pounds. All except Ian, perhaps, the lanky lad now staring at her with owl-eyes. They were eyeing her up like a delightful little gift they hadn't expected to receive, all but old Alister, sharing the hearth with Jamie, silver hair falling in a shimmering curtain around his long, weathered face. No, she didna look frightened; in the warmth of the cottage her body seemed to relax, even; she didn't seem to notice her hands were bound, light eyes sweeping idly around the cottage, looking bored, almost haughty.

Dougal rose from a knee in a ripple of neatly-pleated tartan and well-groomed, thick beard, his shorn head gleaming in the firelight, and approached with the slow, cautious gait of a seasoned stalker used to tracking young doe that bolted at the slightest movement. He stood level with the lass, tall as she was, and as she looked his way, her expression that of serene indifference, Murtagh was caught up in memories – the Mackenzie brothers toe-to-toe with a headstrong sister who had always been able to work them like fools. Dougal was aged now, though, not the eighteen-year-old lad intent on tearing through the highlands with his bare hands and a black vengeance. Callum had done his best to temper the volatile nature of his War Chief, but there was only so much a proud man like Dougal would tolerate.

The shimmering red hair, glowing like copper in the firelight, Dougal's broad good looks, the lass's height, all threw him back to younger days. And that hurt worse than the knocks he'd taken in the strumush with the Redcoats. Squashing the feeling of unease bubbling up painfully in his stomach, Murtagh shifted on his feet and glanced from Dougal to the lass. He'd seen her up against Randall; wondered now how she would handle Dougal Mackenzie. Hoped she wouldn't lay him out flat on his backside as she had the Captain, not surrounded by his men who'd surely stick her through with the dirks if she did. At the very least.

Politely, using a gentle tone Murtagh rarely heard Dougal use with his daughters, Dougal asked the lass, "What's your name?" The lass maintained eye-contact, unafraid.

Just as gently, but with a subtle lift of her chin, the lass said, "Lillian Egan."

"Ye say ye found her?" Dougal shot at him.

"Aye… She was havin' words with a certain Captain of Dragoons with whom we are acquaint," Murtagh said pointedly, his gaze sliding off Dougal to young Jamie. Too close for comfort.

"'Words'?" Lillian Egan said, glancing over her shoulder at him with an expression of mild interest. "I wonder what your definition of an argument is." His lips twitched. And he liked listening to her voice; he'd met men with higher pitch but there was a rich resonance to her voice, and a strange way of delivering her words, her voice didn't dip and peak with each different word. Her voice brought to mind the subtle ripplings of a river, level and almost musical. He'd heard highborn Frenchwomen speak such, always took it as haughtiness. Maybe that was just the way they were taught to speak. And it certainly served her well now, the lulling sense that she was completely at her ease even as an outsider dragged in with hands bound.

"An English lass, eh," Dougal said slowly, taking the measure of her. "Dressed as a man. Why?"

"Safer to travel," Lillian Egan said, with a subtle shift of one shoulder. More than a few pairs of eyes homed in on the way the fabric of her shirt strained against her breasts.

"The good Captain made inference the lady was a whore," Murtagh explained lightly, eyeing her curiously.

"And what was the lady's position in this discussion?" Dougal asked fairly, looking her in the face. Her lips rose in a gentle smile, beguiling and dangerous, and she glanced back at Murtagh, her eyes twinkling in the firelight.

"Should I demonstrate?" she asked in a low voice dripping with amusement. He jerked his head slightly, once, fighting the urge to smile. There were no lines around the lass's mouth; he would hazard a guess she didna smile much. She glanced back at Dougal, shoulders back, her back ramrod straight in a stance he would have pinned on a soldier, but she softened it with a tilt to her hip as she gave him a lingering smile. "I am most certainly _not_ a whore."

"We could put it to the test," a gleeful voice suggested, and as Murtagh flicked Rupert a dark look, Mistress Egan turned a dangerous, challenging glare at the man, filthy and hungry, eyes on her breasts through the drying fabric of her shirt. Several of his friends giggled.

" _Try_ ," she challenged in a low, threatening tone, fair eyes narrowed, chin lowered, body coiling with tension. Rupert blinked, taken-aback at being spoken to in such a way.

"I don't hold with rape," Dougal said, in a biting tone that settled the matter. Angus fell silent abruptly, like a small child caught doing something he oughtn't be. "Ah, we've no' the time for it anyway." Mistress Egan's lips parted, staring at him with eyes widened with stunned disbelief.

"Dougal, I've no idea what she might be, or who, but I'll stake my best shirt she's no' a whore," Murtagh said, crossing his arms over his chest and giving Dougal a serious frown. Given what he'd seen her to do Randall by the river – well, what whore dealt out incapacitating beatings to her clients? Especially when she was an English lass and they were officers of His Majesty's Army.

"If you're quite finished discussing my personal details," she said calmly, gesturing idly at the other end of the cottage, "What's going on there?" Leaving Murtagh bemused – where had the ropes gone? No-one had moved to untie the bindings around her wrists – and ignoring Dougal completely, the lass moved in slow, elegant, leonine saunter to the other end of the cottage. Lulling, Murtagh recognised, even over his discomfort at that short length of rope now dangling loosely from her fingertips, with a grace and purpose that brought predators to mind. Instinct honed beneath the guile. He glanced around; each of the men had stopped to stare at her simply _walking_.

Sidling over to the fire, he watched her glance to the side at Jamie, propped on a stool, as she dropped the length of the rope into the fire. Then she sank into a squat in front of him, forearms draped on her knees, head tilted to the side, eyes fixed on his shoulder. Murtagh glanced at the others, coiled with tension as soon as she had approached the lad. They were Dougal's men, but Jamie had Mackenzie blood. And they had orders.

She clucked her tongue softly, eyes flickering up to Jamie's face, and moving stealthily up behind the lad, Murtagh watched the lass's face as the firelight caressed the softened curves of her high cheekbones, the bow of her lips, illuminating the tips of her short, thick eyelashes, the graceful length of her throat, and he admitted, gave him a good eyeful down the unbuttoned neck of her shirt. She had no eyes for anyone but Jamie, though, or rather, his shoulder. She said softly, "What a pretty mess."

She didn't even flinch when Angus unsheathed his dirk. Her pale eyebrows drew together with a tiny line between them, and pinned Angus with a look, saying sternly, "Put that away." She turned back to Jamie, features smoothing away any trace of annoyance, seeming to open up as she half-smiled at him. "Did you get these fending _them_ off? They look _hungry_. And you're prettier than my sister."

She must have surprised the lad; she got a pained laugh for her taunting comment. Jamie _was_ a fine-looking lad, he'd be getting himself into trouble over it before too long. The lasses at Leoch were sure to scratch each other's eyes out over him. Every hot-blooded male for miles around had been the same way over his mother. Mistress Egan gave his shoulder a look like she was trying to see through it. Her features were a smooth mask, he had no knowing what was going on behind them, but Murtagh felt sure in placing good money she was sharp as his dirk.

"I can set that for you, if you like. Stitch up the wound," she offered. The rest of them might not even have been there, she paid them no more mind than a horse did a fly. Jamie, frowning at her as if wondering what to make of her, gave a wary nod. She glanced up, so quickly and direct, Murtagh felt pinned.

"Did you happen to retrieve my pack?" she asked, and he gave her a short nod. All she said was, "I'll need it," before she had focused again on Jamie's shoulder, dismissing him. Standing up straight in a ripple, she tilted her head back, shaking her hair free, and gathered it up into a fist, twisting and coiling it neatly at the back of her head, jamming in pins from her pocket. She looked almost severe with her hair drawn back, intent on nothing more than Jamie's injured shoulder. Not a swoon in sight.

Frowning at her before slipping out of the cottage, he doubted the lass had ever swooned in her life.

* * *

 **A.N.** : It's a short one, but I'm going to update the second half of this chapter later tonight.


	4. Physic, Whore, Soldier, Spy

**A.N.** : Evening! Second part for you.

* * *

 **A Mhaighdean Bhan Uasal**

 _04_

* * *

Cool and intent, when he'd returned to the cottage with her fine leather pack – it must weigh at least five stone, he thought – she was examining Jamie's shoulder, murmuring gently to him, standing close between his legs, fingertips just brushing his skin, as if she didn't want to spook the lad. She didn't pay Murtagh any mind as he passed over her pack into her possession, ignoring everything but the bleeding gash in Jamie's shoulder, digging blindly through the contents, "…very lucky. Another inch and the musket-ball would have shattered the clavicle. Then you'd really be buggered." Murtagh blinked, and Jamie shifted in surprised; she'd sworn so casually, it the men raise their eyebrows at each other.

Peeling the fine black-leather gloves off, she pressed them palm-to-palm, tucking them into the waist of her breeches. The firelight glinted off gold rings decorating her long, pretty fingers. He'd seen the strength and skill in those hands, putting Randall on his arse in the mud; now he saw beneath the leather her hands were incredibly elegant, but frowned at the jewellery. She seemed a sharp lass – why wear her money on her person for anyone to see, the rings, the pearls dangling from her ears glittering with bright clear stones that sparkled appealingly in the firelight, if she didna want trouble.

He noticed she wore a wide gold band on her left hand, set with the same clear sparkling stones as wired through her ears. Mistress Egan was married.

He wondered if her husband had taught her to fight. If he had, she was a credit to him.

She retrieved a small roll of tartan, the same as that buckled to her pack, unknotting it and spreading it out flat on the floor at Jamie's feet. Silver flickered and shone in the firelight, a collection of needles, some straight, half of them curved wickedly. Suture needles. She retrieved a small silver cup with a neat handle, letting out an impatient sigh and turning to the fire as she tried to thread a needle. Without looking up from her work, she asked the room in general, "I don't suppose there's any whisky knocking about?" Each of them had a skin.

She had a commanding presence, used to giving orders and having them obeyed without question. Even by men. The fine jewels on her fingers, the softness of her fine shirt, her perfumed hair, he might have said she had some money, at the very least had come from a family with a good deal of it. But what was she doing here, and threading a needle to stitch up a bleeding man as if she was doing little more than completing her embroidery hoop. Unconcerned, surrounded by large men, but then, he'd seen her fight. Unusual female.

Angus freed his whisky skin from his belt, passing it over – Jamie took it, biting off the stopper and taking a swig. With a scowl, the lass snatched the flask away. "None for you, thank you. I won't have you vomiting all over me while I stitch your sutures." She poured a lug of whisky into the cup, dropping into it the threaded suture needle. Glancing at the flash speculatively, she eyed Jamie, put the skin to her lips and took a hearty swig. She frowned, swallowing, and glanced at the flask as she licked her lips. "That's got some peat to it…" Her lips twitched, and she took another swig before pulling squares of red flannel and rolls of gauze from her pack, methodically but gently swabbing as much of Jamie's spilt blood as she could, the gauze resting on her pack by the needle and thread, soaking in whisky.

"Will ye be startin' before dawn?" Dougal grunted irritably. "A dozen Redcoats out there combin' the forest for us an' you fiddling with yer _embroidery_."

"If a half-dozen Redcoats, most likely injured if you'd had anything to say about it earlier, can sneak up on you all in an ambush _here_ , I'm quite certain you'd deserve it," the lass said calmly, eyes only on Jamie as he fidgeted, inhaling sharply when she wrapped her fingers lightly around his wrist. "I have to get your upper-arm into the correct position to prevent a break before I can pop the joint back into place." She had a gentle, matter-of-fact tone that soothed even Murtagh, just watching her about to get to physicking his injuries. She glanced up, pinning Murtagh with a look. "Would you hold him? You can't fidget, or it'll just take longer." Murtagh nodded, and locked Jamie in a hold to keep him still. He watched, as best he could over Jamie's injured shoulder, as the lass gripped Jamie's forearm, twisting and grimacing slightly from effort as she manoeuvred the useless arm; he could feel Jamie tensing, pressing back against Murtagh in discomfort. It looked like hard work, the lass was using all her strength to manipulate the arm, making Jamie pant and shudder. She locked eyes with Jamie when she seemed satisfied by something, a fine sheen of sweat glistening on her forehead, breast heaving slightly with each breath. "This is the worst part, but it'll be quick. I'm going to pop the joint back into the socket; it'll sound awful, but I know what I'm doing." Panting himself, Jamie lifted his chin stubbornly, and nodded once. He saw her pretty white teeth flash once as she grimaced from exertion, and with a grinding, crunching _pop_ that made him shiver, she forced Jamie's shoulder back into joint. The tension in Jamie's body relaxed in an instant, gasping in relief and shock.

He uttered a word of praise in Gaelic, in a tone of wonderment. Murtagh was impressed. The other men had watched with grimaces, fidgeting in discomfort, watching with curiosity as she had worked Jamie's arm. "It doesna hurt anymore!"

"It will," Mistress Egan promised quietly, already moving on to other things. She pulled the stopper of Angus' skin of whisky with her teeth, pouring a good measure over her hands and wiping them together. "You'll have some bruising, and you'll need a little physiotherapy, but in a few weeks you won't even know you'd dislocated your shoulder."

" _Physiotherapy_?" Rupert drawled. She didn't address him, eyes on Jamie as she soaked another flannel with whisky, intent on the musket-ball wound.

"Stretches and exercises to rehabilitate the joint," she explained, ignoring Jamie's hiss of pain as she pressed the whisky-soaked cloth to his wound, cleaning it. "Movement in your shoulder will be tight; you'll risk further injury if you're not careful. Although you don't seem the type to do as you're told."

"You've the right of it there," Murtagh said quietly, and he caught Jamie's smirk, eyes glittering in the fire as he gazed up at the lass.

"You may find it helpful to put hot compresses on the joint – hot stones wrapped in your plaid, perhaps," the lass said thoughtfully.

"Takin' a guess you've done this before," Jamie said, glancing down at the wound she was cleaning thoroughly, disregarding any physical pain Jamie might be in, and the lass nodded, stepping closer only to peer over his shoulder at the other wound. She cleaned it, too, angling Jamie's torn shirt so that it didn't touch.

"Often," she said quietly, in a tone that suggested _that_ was all she'd say on the matter. "I hope you don't mind needles."

"We've no' the time for more of yer _physicking_ ," Dougal rumbled agitatedly. The others were coiled with tension, now that Jamie's shoulder was set. They had all gone miles with open wounds, half of them had a needle on them to stitch wounds as they rode but they couldn't sew in the dark, although Jamie used his left hand to write and such, could probably manage to sew up at least the wound to his front. The lass rubbed whisky onto her hands again, squatting down long enough to pick up the suture-needle and thread in the little cup with two fingers, and set to work on Jamie's shoulder, ignoring Dougal.

"You have two options," she said, glancing over her shoulder to Dougal as Jamie winced and exhaled a slow, shaky breath while she drew the thread through him. "You can wait for me to stitch and bandage these wounds properly, and be on your way safe in the knowledge he won't turn feverish on the road. Or you can leave with him bleeding, and the potential to slow you all down when he drops from blood-loss. You'll either have to separate into two groups with one travelling slower, or leave him behind. It's your choice."

There was no choice. Murtagh's beard twitched as he glanced at the lass, impressed. Oh, she'd said it in a gentle enough voice as though she didn't _know_ how it sounded: she could stitch Jamie now and he'd live, or they could leave and they'd be forced to choose between leaving him behind or risking every man here when Redcoats caught up to their scent. What War Chief risked the lives of his men when mere moments could save them all a good deal of trouble later on? While Dougal's jaw turned to stone, eyes flashing like fire, she continued neatly sewing Jamie's shoulder.

"And if the Redcoats happen upon us while you're tendin' to the lad?" Dougal glowered.

"The more you waste my time trying to stop me from doing my work, the longer I'm inclined to take sewing and test whether your instincts are worth listening to," she said, sniffing slightly, her focus entirely on her work, her features serene. Her tone was gentle, her expression almost… _intimate_ as she locked eyes with Jamie, and a ghost of a smile tickled the corners of her lips. "That's five sutures, my petal. About six more. Count them, if it helps." Jamie nodded, exhaling another shaky breath, but his lips quirked in amusement at the dainty term of endearment she'd given him. A distraction, perhaps, as she administered a sixth suture? Murtagh winced in sympathy. Stitching wounds was worse than receiving them in the first place.

He noticed Jamie's face had leeched of colour, and his left hand, his good hand, was fisted on his knee, knuckles white.

He also noticed Jamie's eyes resting every other second on the lass's breasts; he had an excellent vantage to admire her cleavage in the low V of the parting of her shirt, and the taunting glimpse of lace – he thought it was? – beneath, encasing the high, heavy swells. Riding over to the cottage, he'd happened to notice the lass wore no stays beneath the shirt, but she wore _something_ just visible through the fine fabric, cutting across her middle-back. He'd not be puzzling out an Englishwoman's underclothes, though, and let Jamie admire the lass's breasts if it distracted him from the bite of the suture needle.

She seemed entirely unconcerned by Dougal's growing ire, the famous Mackenzie temper flaring up, ready for one false step or word from any one of them to set him off. Murtagh's lips twitched, though, memories flooding him… Felt like Ellen was among them again; she'd never given either of her brothers any quarter. Callum was laird, Ned Gowan had ensured an able-bodied Mackenzie was named War Chief ("Not without precedent"), but until her elopement it was Ellen Mackenzie who truly ruled at Leoch. Callum had learned well by her.

Mistress Egan finished stitching Jamie's front, and Murtagh moved without being asked so she could tend to his back. She had arranged his shirt to free the wounded area, and Murtagh winced at the webbing of thick, raised scars crisscrossing his back, glad for Jamie's sake the other lads couldn't see them. Lad was touchy about his scars, for his own reasons. Murtagh's heart was proud to bursting he'd survived two floggings as severe as they had been, in the space of a week. He saw Jamie's shoulders tense, and she told him off for scrunching his bad shoulder but paid no mind to the scars Murtagh didn't doubt she could see, even if she couldn't imagine the extent to which they went.

Fewer stitches were needed to his back; the lad had taken the shot from behind, and he shot Rupert, the best marksman among them with a pistol, a glower. He knew the lad wanted to get home, back to Lallybroch; Dougal _needed_ Lallybroch, needed it vulnerable, without its laird, needed Jamie close so he could weasel out the lad's intentions. But the lad had Mackenzie blood – they'd never know his intent until Jamie wished it. He'd inherited that from his mother, too, not just the flaming curls glinting in the firelight. With a dainty pair of silver scissors, Mistress Egan cut the last of the thread after knotting it, and dipped to pick up a tin of some ointment from her pack, scooping up a good amount on her finger.

"This is to kill off anything that might cause the wound to enflame," she said softly, when Jamie jerked away from her finger, smeared with ointment. She held the tin under his nose, and he gave a hesitant sniff. "Plant-based. No powdered skull or mouse-ears, I promise you." Jamie gave her a grin then, and allowed her to smear the stuff on his stitched wounds. She folded a length of brilliant white gauze over his shoulder, and shot Murtagh a stern look; without her asking, he knew what she wanted, and he kept the fabric pressed to Jamie's shoulder as she unrolled another length of gauze. "I don't want you to submerge the wound when you bathe, it'll only invite inflammation. Boil cloth in a solution of garlic bulbs, thyme and comfrey for a good twenty minutes before using it to cleanse the wounds. I'll not give you my ointment but if you can source honey, smear some of that on the wounds after you've cleansed them, and make sure to use clean bandages, do you understand me?"

Jamie nodded. She had a way of speaking that brought to mind fierce Mrs Fitz. You dinna naysay her. Murtagh doubted the lad would dare _not_ follow Mistress Egan's instruction. She gave Murtagh the spine-prickling feeling of a governess, strict and seeming to always have her eye on you, even miles away – and _years_ away – from the nursery. "Aye."

"After a week you can take the bandages off, the fresh air will do the wounds a world of good," Mistress Egan said, wrapping her arms around Jamie's torso to loop bandages around, pressing the pad of gauze firmly to his shoulder, protecting the sutured wounds. "But keep them clean." She gave Jamie a look that might have turned a lesser man to stone. "Try not to get anyone else's sweat on them." She arched one pale brow, and a few of the men chuckled.

She gently threaded Jamie's arm back into his shirt, acknowledging his wince. "Hot compresses will help, as I said. Have you a coat?"

"Aye," Alister grunted, passing her a bundle of faded wool. She helped Jamie on with his coat, careful of his hurt shoulder.

"I need a belt." None of the men moved. Dougal finally glowered, and Angus grumbled, unbuckling the faded leather at his hips, passing it to her. "I know this will be falling on deaf ears, but try not to use your arm." She reached around Jamie again, buckling Angus' belt around his torso in a way that pinned his arm to his chest.

"Why didna you use another bandage?" Murtagh asked softly, watching her buckle the belt without seeing it, behind Jamie's back.

"Limited supply, and night's fallen," Mistress Egan said softly, already turning to repack her things methodically. She tossed the dregs of whisky from her cup into the fire, making it roar for a second, before tucking the cup into her pack; the suturing needle she held into the flame for a good few seconds, careful of her fingertips, before tucking it into her kit, and then it too followed the cup and her ointment into the leather pack. Murtagh glanced at the belt pinning Jamie's arm in place; aye, a white bandage would draw the moonlight, giving anyone within eyeshot a clear mark even in the dark.

"You finished trussin' him up?" Dougal grunted.

"Perhaps," Mistress Egan said lightly, turning to Jamie. "How do you feel?"

"Better. Thank ye," he answered, gazing up at Mistress Egan with a look Murtagh had never seen on the lad's face before. But he knew what it meant. _Nothing there but trouble, lad_ , he thought.

"When you ruptured your shoulder, did you fall or was it in a fight?"

"Fell from my horse when I was shot," Jamie said, grimacing. "Put my hand out tae stop myself."

"You didn't hit your head?" she asked, that stern, serene look overcoming her features again, discerning and clever.

"Nay," Jamie said, shaking his head.

"Well, _you_ won't have concussion, at least," she said, giving Murtagh an evil eye. He probably had hit her a little too hard – but he felt justified in doing so, after seeing her fight. "I've done all I can do. The rest is up to you."

"Can ye ride?" Dougal asked.

"Aye," Jamie said, eyes still on Mistress Egan. She had a face hard to look away from.

"Good. We're leavin'." Dougal gathered up his coat, eyeing the lass darkly. "As for ye." He gripped her below the elbow, and Murtagh saw the flare of instinct and the tightening of her jaw, eyes locking on Dougal's hand clamped on her arm. Growing tense, more wary for Dougal than the lass, he rested his hand nonchalantly on the tang of his dirk. "You're comin' wi' me."

Her eyes narrowing was the only sign before suddenly she had Dougal bent double, grunting and writhing in shock and pain, his arm outstretched before her twisted at an ungodly angle, wrist clamped in her hand, her knee pressing against his upper-arm. "I am not in the habit of taking abuse from anyone, no matter who he thinks he is. Unless you wish me to break your arm, sir, you will _mind_ _me_."

The men had all, except Murtagh and Jamie, had drawn their blades. The lass narrowed her eyes before flinging Dougal away from her, standing up straight and proud, eyeing them with a disdainful glare. Murtagh watched the lass curiously. She was a fighter, he had seen her send a grown man sprawling, and now, taking Dougal unawares? She'd been trained, but not to obey. In physicking and fighting. After removing her from the area where any one of Randall's Redcoats might pick her up and ill-use her, Murtagh was reluctant to see the lass, reminding him so much of the one he had lost, come to harm. He addressed the War Chief in Gaelic, "Dougal, ye say Beaton succumbed to the fever."

"Aye. Tore through him within a week," Dougal responded, blinking in shock as he stepped away from the lass, most likely trying to think what to make of her. The lass had her eyes on Dougal as well, though they slid over the other men occasionally, counting. She had placed herself with enough room behind her to move freely, keeping no-one to her back she could not account for.

"I've seen what the lass can do," Murtagh said vaguely. "She's a good head on her shoulders for physicking, I would no' want her tendin' the English I run my claymore through." When he killed a man, he liked them to say dead.

"If you're going to talk about me," the lass said mildly, "please do so in a language I can understand."

"Ye've no Gaelic?"

"Only the rude words," Mistress Egan sniffed, dusting her palms together as she gazed into the fire, completely unfazed. Murtagh glanced at Dougal, exchanging loaded looks. Perhaps he saw the fire of Ellen Mackenzie in the lass, too. It wasna just the hair, nor the height.

"Where did ye come from, lass?" Dougal asked, in a would-be gentle voice.

"Craigh na dun," she murmured, still staring into the fire. Her expression was still that serene mask Murtagh was used to, even as she had laid Randall out on his back.

"Aye, that's where Murtagh says he found ye," Dougal said quietly. "An' before that?"

"I've travelled many places," Mistress Egan said quietly.

"And where are ye going?" Dougal asked.

"Ahead," Mistress Egan said enigmatically. She raised her eyes, sliding them coolly over Dougal, massaging his arm. "I'm not inclined to remain kidnapped; I shall go my way, you shall go yours. Neither of us needs interfere with the other any more than we already have."

Whatever the lass was, physic, whore, soldier, spy, Murtagh dinna care so much as not wishing to see her come to harm. Any lass who would flatten the scum Randall like he was no more than a doll was alright in his eyes, but he couldna imagine the Captain would feel the same when he roused. After Jamie, they had a good measure of the man. Murtagh would not have this lass – as recognisable as Jamie himself with their flaming hair – left to feel the repercussions of the beating she had given Randall. No man among them would hand over anyone, Highlander, Sassenach or no, to Captain Jonathan Randall. Not for anything.

"Ye shall remain in my custody until such time you've convinced me ye were no' placed in the woods for someone to pick up," Dougal growled low.

"Pick up? Like I'm a lost kitten?" Mistress Egan blinked. "Placed at Craigh na dun when, and by whom? To what point and purpose, sir?"

"To _spy_." She didn't gasp in horror; she rolled her eyes, shaking her head. She fixed Dougal with a cool look dripping with disdain.

"What you get up to in your own country on your own time is none of my business."

"No?"

"I never get involved in politics," she said evenly, raising her hands, palms out. "I don't particularly care who sits on what throne or what religion you practice or the philosophies you raise your children by – sooner or later, they'll all change. Why risk my neck whispering in people's ears when change is inevitable anyway, desirable or not. I suggest you let me alone, and not provoke me to think of you as an enemy."

"That sounds like a threat, Mistress Egan," Dougal said in a low, dangerous voice.

"Take it as you will, it's intended as a friendly warning; don't make enemies through carelessness," Mistress Egan said softly, with a directness that visibly unsettled Dougal. "I am not a spy. An Englishwoman travelling the Highlands alone, dressed as a man, yes; I have some training as a physician. That is all." It wasn't all; but Murtagh was not inclined to tell the men the extent of what he'd seen her do to the Captain. Mostly, they wouldna believe him. The lass had a backbone of steel, it seemed, but that alone would not convince them she was a trained warrior – not until they saw it with their own eyes, and by then it might be too late. They'd never see her coming. But Murtagh would, and he'd be wary.

Murtagh said a few words to Dougal in Gaelic; the War Chief glowered but eyed the lass consideringly.

"Ye canna wander the Highlands alone," Murtagh said gently. "Ye will end up with yer throat slit for the jewels on your fingers, or worse."

"That would be unfortunate. But preferable to being held hostage under suspicion of spying," Mistress Egan said coolly.

"No' held as prisoner," Murtagh said gently. "Employed as physician." Her expression didn't change, but she tilted her head thoughtfully to one side, gazing at him.

"You couldn't afford me." He chuckled softly. The delicate rings on her fingers, the fineness of her white shirt, the quality of her leather breeches and pack, aye, he suspected she was a lady who appreciated the finer things. But Callum Mackenzie did too; and he'd pay for a decent physician whose jaw wouldn't drop in horror at the sight of his twisted legs.

"Name yer price," Dougal challenged. Her eyes lanced to him, two unyielding forces.

"Forty pounds sterling a year," she said without hesitation. "I would have leave to treat who I want with no questions asked as to my methods, and no interference where my patients are concerned. And the terms of my employment would be drawn up in a contract, including the freedom to tender my resignation and leave whenever I wished." Murtagh glanced at Dougal, impressed.

Dougal gritted his jaw. "Fine."

"And I'll have your oath – swear it on your dirk – that no man shall lay a hand on me, either in anger or for any other reason," she said, lifting her chin slightly, her eyes cool, as the men shifted uncomfortably. To swear such a thing on their dirks – on holy iron, considered an unbreakable vow – was no small ask. She knew of some of the Highland ways, if she was not a Scotswoman herself.

She was bold, though, calling Dougal's bluff. And she knew it. No Highlander made light of an oath sworn on his holy iron.

Would be easier to slit the lass's throat, and Murtagh was sure the thought crossed Dougal's mind. But a talented physic was hard to come by in these parts, and he knew Callum had sent inquiries to Edinburgh to procure a new physician for Leoch, without success. Better to have her close and keep their wits about them than waste what God had seen fit to give them.

Dougal's eyes narrowed, jaw tightening, but he drew his dirk.

"I, Dougal Mackenzie, War Chief of the clan Mackenzie and of Leoch, do swear by the cross of our Lord Jesus Chris, and by the holy iron that I hold, that no harm shall befall ye at my own hand or the hand of any man that lives upon Mackenzie lands," Dougal growled. With a vicious glower he kissed the blade where it met the tang.

"Wonderful," she said softly. "Shall we go?"

"Aye. And ye'll tend tae the lad," Dougal ordered. The lass eyed Jamie speculatively.

"I'll tend to his shoulder," she said softly, "nothing more." A flush rose up the lad's thick neck as the men snickered, the tension broken. She offered him her hand, and Jamie glanced at it before accepting; she helped him to his feet. The lass was tall herself, standing over all but Dougal; she had to look up into Jamie's eyes, and for the briefest moment, a smile flickered across her lips.

She rifled through her pack, drawing out a heavy wool coat, sharp and clean, fitted and falling to her mid-thigh, double-breasted with wide lapels. A man's coat, but it suited her. She buttoned it over her white shirt, arranging a thick, knitted cowl over her shoulders, drawing a fold over her head, covering her bright hair. She pulled her gloves on, buckling her pack, and swung it over one shoulder. She raised her eyebrows as the men stood around. "Well?"

"Jamie, she's under your charge," Dougal snapped in Gaelic, glaring at the lass. She eyed Jamie, her features impassive. "Any trouble, you're to deal with her." Jamie sighed softly, but shrugged a shoulder, jerking his head subtly at the lass, toward the door.

* * *

The drizzle had turned into a downpour; glacial rain hammered down, they'd be soaked through in moments. Her thick wool pea-coat would keep her warm, but not dry, and the rain bit her exposed skin. Following the redhead out of the cottage, she eyed the horses dubiously as the other men leapt into saddles with ease.

She'd never ridden a horse in her life.

Surrounded by armed men lusty after a fight, she had been completely unfazed. The redhead's wounds hadn't bothered her at all; strong-arming Dougal Mackenzie into a vow on his dirk for her own protection, negotiating terms of employment, all necessary not only for her survival but to establish a precedent, that was easy. She had established how she expected to be treated, and what she would not tolerate. She wasn't a pushover, she never had been for all her gentle nature, and knew in this time and place, it didn't matter how talented or intelligent she was. She was a woman. And alone.

But getting on a horse? Granddad had managed to coerce Bridie into riding lessons; but once, an ill-tempered horse had tossed its head and hit Lillian full in the face. She'd been bruised and swollen for weeks, couldn't see out of one eye for days. She had been black and blue; her mother had been anxious she'd lose teeth that had come loose. She hadn't, thankfully, but she'd had an aversion to the powerful animals ever since. Besides, she'd had no need of them in her daily life, not like where she found herself…the eighteenth century. Each of the men rode a sturdy pony; in the Highlands, the paths were so poor, the terrain ill-suited to horses, that they were more a mark of wealth than anything else. Like owning a convertible sports-car you only drove on warm summer days.

"Do ye no' ride, Mistress Egan?" the redhead asked politely, seeing the look on her face. She was unnerved, she would admit it. But better by a horse than by the men surrounding her. If she wanted to survive, she had to be clever, unfazed by whatever she came across, and appear fearless. Inside that cottage, it had been no different to entering unfamiliar territory with soldiers she didn't know in Kabul or Baghdad. The flare of intimidation and nerves, quickly smothered. Not enough to forget who to be wary of; but harnessed, to survive, to go above and beyond, to earn the respect of those around her for her skill and steely dedication.

The men were the same, no matter what they wore, their language or weapons. A soldier was a soldier, no matter the time or place. But all the rest of it, if this truly wasn't a dream or a drug-induced hallucination or a coma, a psychotic break, then she had to assimilate as gracefully as she could to a time she had only ever read about in books, recreated with Granddad for his research, his enjoyment and appreciation of a time long-gone. And that meant getting on that pony.

"No," she said quietly. "No, I don't." The redhead squinted at her in the rain, then reached to take the pack from her, draping it over the back of the saddle by his own sleeping-furs, struggling with the ties and buckles to keep it in place.

"Doona worry, Mistress, Deòiridh's gentle as a doe," he said warmly.

"Should she be carrying both our weight?" Lillian asked uncertainly. It seemed a bit unfair. "I'm heavier than your usual lass."

"You're tall," the redhead acquiesced. "But Deòiridh can carry two grown men for miles; she will no' mind ye." He let out a sigh of annoyance, struggling with the ties on his saddle. She stepped up, eyeing the loops and buckles, and took over, fastening her heavy pack to the poor beast of burden. The redhead held her pack in place while she lashed it to the saddle; she saw his frown as he stared at the blanket roll at the base of her rucksack.

"What is it?"

"Ye have tartan, Mistress?" he frowned bemusedly, rainwater dripping from his wilted curls. He licked droplets of water from his lips, blinking quickly in the rain. She lifted her chin slightly.

"It was my father's," she said softly. Near enough to the truth; Granddad had given it to her. It was their clan tartan. Twelve yards of warm wool, enough for her to wear as an _earasaid_ , more than enough for a _great kilt_ , such as the ones each of these men wore with their shirts and dun bonnets. These were not worn for sake of tradition or ornamentally; they were worn out of necessity. Though it would raise more questions, these men might be more inclined to be less suspicious of her if they thought she had Scottish ancestry. Dangerous though it would be to drop clan names – the ancestor her grandfather shared his name with would now be laird of his own castle, but she didn't dare give his name. Enquiries could be made; she would be caught out as a liar. Still, her father had been Scottish, and she could manipulate details of her own life into some form of truth these men might accept.

The redhead blinked at her. "Then…ye have Scottish blood?"

"A few drops, and little else," she said honestly.

"Why dinna ye say as much to Dougal?"

"No-one asked." He gave her a thoughtful look, and frowned as she unbuckled the tartan – he'd reminded her of its use, its warmth. She wasn't going to freeze to death – Dougal Mackenzie had mentioned Leoch, a place she knew they were a long way off from. Granddad had taken her to see the ruins, once, she'd been eleven and working on a project for school; she'd been sick on the side of the motorway after Granddad had overtaken a line of lorries at one-hundred miles per hour, belting out Highland songs completely unconcerned by the horns blasting – or the rain thrashing down like Noah needed to finish building his Ark. It was a hundred miles from Inverness to Leoch; it had taken them two hours in the car with Granddad's driving and motorway traffic, and the heating on. It would take them, on horseback, several days. And that was if they stopped.

In a practiced leap, the redhead settled himself into the saddle. He said something in Gaelic to the small man who had knocked her out, and he approached. "Give me yer foot, Mistress," he said, and after taking hold of her tartan, boosted her up into the saddle in front of the redhead, who looped his good arm around her waist to take hold of the reins once she had swung her right leg over the pony's neck. She could feel the redhead's heat, the strength of his hard body, pressed up against her, and her stomach dipped…she hadn't been this close to another person, a _man_ , in years. It was a daunting and heart-breaking thought, and she fidgeted, unused to the sensation of sitting in a saddle, clearing her throat against her immediate emotional discomfort – annoyed her body instantly relaxed into his warmth, the raw scent of male, his strong thighs pressed against hers – and she knew they were strong, his kilt had ridden up a little to give her a teasing glimpse.

"Thank you," she said politely to the small man, taking the plaid as he passed it to her, his dark brow heavy as he eyed it. She glanced over her shoulder as the redhead fidgeted. "Would it bother you if I covered us with my tartan?"

"Nay, I'd be glad for the extra warmth," he said in a soft rumble that made her shiver. She hoped it was really the rain trickling down her neck. She pulled the hand-knitted Katniss cowl she had made over Christmas higher over her head, covering her hair entirely and shielding her eyes. Well, if she had to be in the eighteenth century, she was glad at least of her knitwear and leather trousers. No central-heating.

She was honed for survival. Trained for it. And she was clever. She knew she couldn't survive, not alone. Not without protection. She had no money, no land of her own, no family or friends. She was entirely at the mercy of these men – she would never let them know that. Even if they thought it, she could never confirm it. All she had was her training, and the contents of her pack. She wasn't a qualified doctor or nurse, but by eighteenth-century standards she was far and away the most advanced physician they were ever likely to meet. She was armed with her training and the knowledge of the time that Granddad, through his own obsession, had instilled in her since childhood.

Lillian knew she could not rely on the fact this was _not_ real; knew she had to rely solely on her instincts, and her instincts were to survive. She couldn't survive on her own, with no money or friends. Better to take on employment as she tried to work out just what the hell was going on. Luckily the redhead's wounds had been easily tended. But there would be no advanced surgeries here, no life-saving medicines. They didn't have penicillin, a basic concept of sanitation, of the sources of infection and contagions.

Fidgeting in the saddle, she managed to wrap her tartan around them both, leaving his left arm free to keep a loose hold on the reins. Hyper-aware of the very strong, very _male_ mass pressed against her back, the unfamiliar sensation of sitting astride a horse, surrounded by coarse men muttering in Gaelic in the pouring, glacial rain, Lillian might have found it difficult to relax. Her tartan cocooned them, though, and their heat mingled, trapped inside the wool, lulled by the pony's gentle gait. In the dark they could only travel so fast, and the men set a steady, gentle pace. It had been a long day, and Lillian was used to harsh conditions; she soon found herself nodding off, chin bumping against her chest. He was no better; his strong body enfolding hers almost, his chin had found her shoulder as a perch, and his eyelids were at half-mast despite the soaked hair plastered to his head.

"As we're going to spend the night together," she murmured, turning so she could see over her shoulder, "I think I should at least ask your name."

His lips quirked ironically. "Jamie."

* * *

 **A.N.** : Hello – so, I know I'd promised to update this chapter last night, but, well, shit happens. And today was Mother's Day here in the UK: I managed to cut three fingers separating two wire scourers while I tried to do the washing-up. Three plasters – and I couldn't finish the washing-up, ha! But now I have rather wicked owies on my fingers. And…my weak knees at the droplets of blood make me really think just how masculine and strong Jamie is. Didn't even bother to tell anyone he'd been shot!


	5. Saddle-Sore

**A.N.** : Hello, my ducks!

* * *

 **A Mhaighdean Bhan Uasal**

 _05_

* * *

Horseback made for slow-going. After sighing over the freedom and simplicity of Winterfell's rolling moors and mountains, she would trade every equine creature on Earth (or Westeros) for a heated car with cushioned seats and solid panels. The rain had lasted only long enough to soak them through to the skin, leaving them soggy and uncomfortable. Her tartan kept them bundled up and warm, and her leather trousers made her almost uncomfortable as her warmth combined with his, trapped within the insulation of the wool, but her hair had soaked and the cutting wind whipped through her, down the neck of her coat, through the tiny holes in her chunky, knitted cowl. Her feet and hands were warm and dry, though, and she focused on that blessing, and not her dripping nose, the throbbing in her temples forewarning a headache, or her empty stomach.

It was slow, but it wasn't all bad; her patient seemed impervious to discomfort, displaying the genial nature she had become accustomed to amongst Scotsmen of a certain generation. Apart from his chin on her shoulder when he dozed, and the necessary contact of their position sharing the saddle, he didn't touch her unnecessarily; when he did doze off, she had taken the reins, learning the basics – she and Deòiridh had come to an agreement that she would hold the reins and the horse could do exactly as she felt necessary to get them from Point A to Point B, following the others.

Jamie had told her the name of his horse, Anglicised to 'Dorcas'. He had also told her the names of the men in the group – Dougal Mackenzie, a War Chief to clan Mackenzie of Leoch. The little sharp-eyed man who had knocked her out, who had seen her fight and brought her to the cottage, was Murtagh. Rupert had a wide grin, affable laugh and a religious leaning; she had dubbed his constant companion 'Toothless'. His name was Angus, Jamie murmured in her ear close enough that her spine had tingled, and he had a distrust of "clever lasses and cleanliness". Among the others, there was a young lad, barely eighteen, on his first ride with them, and as Lillian dozed she had sometimes heard Jamie conversing with him in soft Gaelic. She wondered only briefly what they were talking about, and how long it would take her to learn the language, before tucking her chin and nose into her cowl and dozing off.

During her time in the Army she had developed the talent of sleeping anywhere. Ten minutes here, half an hour there, it all counted; she was a light-sleeper anyway, prone to worrying about things completely out of her control, but she had overcome it by realising that _nothing_ was within her control. Her entire life – she was a _soldier_. She followed orders.

Before…before _this_ , the stones…her mind had been a tumultuous mass of worries all knotted together. She had been wondering how her life would shape itself after the Army, without the discipline, the orders that had mapped out her life months and years ahead. It had been her choice, she had had one too many close calls and for her own mental health she needed to focus on herself for once. She had never been a woman who could sit by and do nothing, especially when there were people in need of her help; it had made her an inexhaustible CMT and it was a trait that would distinguish her now. The drive to both be and feel useful.

This wasn't the Army, and yet there was a clear hierarchy – and she knew she didn't want to be in the bottom ranks. She was too educated, too useful not to put herself forward, even if it wasn't in her nature to do so. She had never been the _loud_ girl, the one who pushed for things, put herself forward – Granddad used to despair over her lack of confidence in her own capability. _Well, here you are, Granddad_ , she thought with a gentle sigh. He would have been damned proud of the way she'd worked these men back in that rank cottage. He'd have laughed at highhanded Scotsman having to concede to her demands.

Dougal Mackenzie did not trust her. She didn't like or respect him as a stranger, so this didn't bother her. He kept a sharp eye on her, reminding her of a hawk eagle, predatory and intimidating. The other men gradually lost interest in her chin bumping against her chest, and focused on their own conversations.

Several hours later, she was saddle-sore. She had never understood the phrase before, never appreciated it; Bridie used to hobble home looking like a cowboy after riding. Now she was getting her comeuppance for laughing. By the sun, it couldn't have been later than three o'clock – they hadn't stopped, all through the night, except to water the horses at noon. Her patient, so alert during the night, talking to the younger lad in Gaelic, had grown heavier behind her, chin bumping against her shoulder, until she'd tucked her tartan closer around them, patted his leg, and let him sleep against her. He slept in the sunlight with the fields and crags opening up around them, the men in better spirits with the sun shining – cold and brittle, but bright – laughing and tired but still alert, and despite her aching body Lillian found herself as alert as any of the men.

Mind whirring, she kept yawning in the cold, nose burning, eyes watering, but focused on her surroundings. There was a brisk beauty to the Highlands she had always appreciated; there were few places like it in the world, and she was seeing it now without telephone-wires, without train-tracks and motorways, high-rise flats and sprawling supermarket complexes. Listening to the rough but strangely lulling brogues of the men around her, she examined the countryside, trying to place where they were. She had heard Leoch mentioned; she had been there only once but the intimidating ruin stood out in her memory, trying to uncover its secrets with Granddad like they were playing Indiana Jones.

To try and distract herself, she had tried to spot wildlife. She had counted three gorgeous thrushes, amber and speckled; a couple of robins, two dainty little blue-tits, a flicker of a lovely little wren darting about the underbrush, and she smiled adoringly whenever she saw tiny little grey rabbit-babies hopping about, nibbling on new shoots of grass and the banks of late snowdrops. Tiny they were, and sweet. But what almost knocked her from the saddle were _red squirrels_. She had never seen one – after its introduction to the UK in the 1870s, the North American grey squirrel had wiped out the native British red-squirrel everywhere but Brownsea Island. And she smiled in delight, the story of Squirrel Nutkin replaying in her head – and the memory of reading it to her nieces and nephews over Christmas making her stomach clench. Spotting wildlife was a pleasant way to pass the time, lurching along on horseback with a heavy Scotsman sleeping against her. The sleeping Highlander was actually quite pleasant, sharing his warmth…it had been a long time since she had been so close to anyone, and there was an immediate intimacy when one _slept_ with another person.

She hadn't realised how much she _missed_ her husband. His warmth, his body. The simple pleasure of sleeping with him. She missed other things about having a husband, too, but she'd been in an odd place since Tommy's death, since her own diagnosis of PTSD, to care about the same things. What she'd had with Tommy, she was sure it was rare; people went their entire lives without finding it. Euphoria. They'd been young, and ravenous. Infatuated with each other, tender and raw and ferocious. They were in love.

Lillian had become very adept at navigating uncomfortable thoughts, turning them over, picking them apart, piecing them back together in some semblance of nasty realities she could handle; but thinking about Tommy, her loss, with the redhead Highlander's thighs pressing against hers, his warmth and scent filling her, left her in a depressive episode she hadn't felt in months. She lost interest in the countryside around her, staring unseeingly at a moving point by the horse's neck, the Gaelic conversations around her muting, unfeeling of the cold wind biting her nose.

A soft clicking of someone's tongue drew her out of her mood, at least made her more aware despite the heaviness in her chest, pressing on her shoulders…the _black dog_ , JK Rowling and Churchill had both called it; depression. And he was a huge beast weighing heavily on her. The hand that had fallen, relaxed, into her lap, calloused fingers flexing idly in sleep like a starfish, gently took the reins from her grip, loosening the hold. Words in Gaelic sounded soothing in her ears, whether they were meant for the horse or for her, she didn't know, but she managed to blink for the first time in ages, drawing everything into focus, and she let out a breath, fidgeting.

"Are ye with us?" Jamie asked, murmuring in her ear. "Ye had the look of someone as was off with the fairies." She licked her lips, fidgeting uncomfortably.

"I didn't hurt her, did I?" she asked, of the horse, realising with a guilty wince she must have made it difficult for the horse to climb, the reins held close.

"She was strainin' a wee bit," Jamie said, and she felt his shrug. "No harm done. Where were ye?"

"A long way away," Lillian said honestly, sniffing. She glanced over her shoulder, seeing nothing but copper curls glinting in the weak sun. "You slept well."

"Aye," Jamie said softly.

"I'm glad, it will do you good," she said softly.

"You dinna sleep so well," Jamie observed. "Kept dozing off and startling again."

"Can you blame me?" Lillian asked softly, eyes following the men as they seemed to change formation. He made a thoroughly male noise low in his throat.

"No," he said, with a gentle smile when she glanced back at him. "But ye have Dougal's oath, and he willna take it lightly. There's no' a man here would risk his ire keeping his vow tae protect ye. Doona worry, Mistress, ye can sleep safe against me." She squinted up at the sun. They had a couple of hours of daylight left before sunset, but in this hilly, craggy part of the Highlands dusk would come sooner, and deadlier.

Murtagh had picked her up in a relatively gentle area, Craigh na dun had been a picturesque hill rising amongst gentle plains and meadows. Riding through the night, they had passed into wilder country, more mountainous but beautiful, full of the lulling rush of new leaves, the scent of snow and late daffodils on the breeze, the twittering of birds hidden in the woods. This was the real, wild Highlands, left to its own devices. Civilisation hadn't carved its way through the countryside.

And that related to the men as well as the mountains. The rules of this time were very different to what Lillian was used to; just a glimpse of how these men had treated her in the cottage – taunts of rape, suspicion, grabbing her as if she was a doll to use as they pleased – showed what she could expect. Perhaps Jamie felt ingratiated to her for the work she had done on him, setting his shoulder without breaking the bone, stitching him up and ignoring the scars she had seen teasing glimpses of on his back, but all but her initial captor Murtagh regarded her with a strong sense of distrust and thinly-veiled loathing. Because she was foreign, and a woman.

She had been trying to puzzle out Murtagh's motives. Obviously he had seen her with Randall. Had he knocked her out and brought her to that cottage to get her to safety, or to use her to his own ends? He hadn't laid a hand on her, barely spoken to her, had kept her bound for his own safety having seen the damage she had caused Randall. She doubted he'd lay a hand on her. The others? They might have been tempted to try, but she had Dougal's oath, and even without him she was taller than most and just as solidly built as some, and she had unnerved them with her blasé attitude about being dragged in ropes amongst a group of big men high on adrenaline from a fight. She remembered Cersei Lannister's murmured threat, _When a man's blood is up, anything with tits looks good_.

Although a woman who could escape the bondage Murtagh had imposed on her without their notice until it was too late, get the drop on War Chief Dougal Mackenzie, set a wounded man's injuries without turning a hair, well, that wasn't a woman _she'd_ mess with. She knew she would be a rare bird wherever she went. In _this_ time; the eighteenth century. When, though? What year was she in? Pre-1746, she knew that at the very least. Before the uprising, the war and the ensuing famine. The rape of the Highlands, Granddad had called it, when the English had destroyed the clans, the Highland culture, banning tartan and Gaelic.

"I might sleep later," she sighed. She had too much to think about now, she didn't show it but she was too worried about too many things to keep straight in her own head, and her head hurt. She just wanted to lie down, put her head on a soft pillow, and _sleep_.

Maybe when she woke she'd be propped up against the stones in Craigh na dun, having missed the last bus back to Inverness. She was so exhausted, she'd splurge on another night at the lovely B&B with its quaint parlour, bookcase full of Agatha Christie, Dan Brown and PG Wodehouse, the flickering fire and toasted hot-cross buns. It would be Easter in a few days.

"Sleep now," Jamie said gently. "Willna harm ye."

"That's not it," Lillian admitted. She could have curled up against Jamie's broad chest and slept for days, searing in his warmth, inhaling his scent… "I'll stay awake until my body shuts down, there's too much on my mind."

He made that masculine sound in his throat again, _Mmmgh_.

"Anything I can do tae set yer mind at ease?" he asked gently, his voice lower than ever. A shiver went down her spine, and she swallowed. Her immediate thought made her fidget, but she stifled it, annoyed by herself.

"Not much, unfortunately," she sighed. "Don't worry about me. How is the musket-wound?"

"Itches a bit when I think of it the bandage," Jamie admitted, with a slight grimace. "But they doona burn."

"And your shoulder?"

"Aches," Jamie winced. "But tis more uncomfortable, wi' my arm bound in place, than anything."

"In an ideal world I'd send you to bed with hot compresses," Lillian sighed. "Whenever we get to where we're going, I'll re-dress the wounds, get a hot stone to the shoulder to soothe the muscles."

"Shouldna take more than a few hours, I reckon," Jamie said. He gave her a lopsided, charming smile. "Murtagh had some luck when he found ye."

" _You_ had some luck when Murtagh found me," Lillian corrected, glancing back at his shoulder, the belt still binding his arm to his chest. Well, he'd had the arm bound for a full day, if nothing else he had given the joint time to rest, the muscles to knit. "I imagine they'd have tried to force the joint back into place, breaking your arm."

"Most like," Jamie smiled unconcernedly. She rolled her eyes, turning away. _Men_. "Where did ye learn such things? Settin' the bone, stitching me up?"

"My father was an Army surgeon," Lillian said. Not entirely a lie; her father had been a brain-surgeon, one of the best of his generation. But a connection to the Army would explain away a lot of her obvious differences. "I was an excellent apprentice." He made that enigmatic male noise again, and he adjusted his weight in the saddle, tucking his arm around her waist to press her close, readjusting the tartan around them. She sighed softly to herself, letting her head rest back on his good shoulder, physically exhausted but mentally wired. She had drawn her cowl down from her head, warm from her wool coat, leather trousers, and Jamie.

She had to keep the few details she wanted to give straight in her own mind. Her father was a Scotsman; the tartan she carried had been his. Her father had been an Army surgeon; he had left Scotland at eighteen after a falling-out with his father, and had never returned. Her mother had been a beautiful Frenchwoman who had come from some money; the last of it now decorated Lillian's fingers. Her husband had been an English soldier killed abroad. Her sister had moved to the colonies; being used to travelling, and uncomfortable with the idea of being idle, Lillian had decided to sell her things and go and do some good, offering her skills as a physician wherever they were needed.

There. Simple enough. Gave her a backstory, a point of origin, and the details were believable – and compounded the fact that she was _alone_. She had no husband, no family. No-one to ransom her to, no connections. A woman married to a common soldier in His Majesty's Army was not likely to have the money or connections necessary to make a spy. Anyway, she was too recognisable. What good was a 5'9", red-haired female spy?

So she had her story. She just had to stick to it – not difficult; the only details she had altered from the truth were those she couldn't tell a single soul. That her father had died in a _car_ accident; that her husband had been killed by a bomb in Iraq; that Bridie had moved to New Zealand.

Captain Cook wouldn't map the coastline of New Zealand until 1769. Her eldest niece had been looking up Kiwi facts online, excited to move to Middle Earth.

Lillian hadn't had the heart to tell her there would be _no_ Legolas waiting for her, no Fili or Kili or Bilbo. Poor girl; but she had to get used to devastating realities sooner or later.

She yawned as the horse plodded on. Jamie seemed more awake now, alert, and she sat a little straighter as they meandered along a picturesque little river, willows sweeping their long fingertips into the water, fish flickering silver, the rush of the wind through the new, silvery leaves, the crisp scent of evergreen and pine, the pretty tinkling of the water to their right, the steady clip-clop of the ponies' hooves, and increasingly more irritable grumblings of the saddle-sore men. After the close wood, full of chirping birds and melodic winds through the trees, the forget-me-not sky opened up, revealing mountains touched with mist. One of them was instantly recognisable, and she sat up straight in her seat so quickly, she felt Jamie start.

"Cocknammon Rock," she said softly, her heart sinking. She'd completed her Duke of Edinburgh Award there, hiking and camping; before that, Granddad had forced her and a thoroughly irritable eight-year-old Bridie up to the summit. It was one of those spring half-term holidays where he had dragged them out with sleeping-bags and little else, forcing them to learn how to light fires, skin rabbits or tickle trout, giving them history lessons when they could do nothing but listen at the end of a long day of hiking, exhausted.

"Been through here before, have ye?" Jamie asked quietly.

"A very long time ago," Lillian said sorrowfully. A sad smile touched the corner of her mouth. "I don't think that mountain-range will _ever_ change." She frowned, suddenly sitting up alert, and gripped his hand on the reins, giving a gentle tug so the horse snorted but stilled.

"What's wrong?" Jamie asked in a low voice, responding to the obvious tension in her body-language. The trained soldier in her reared to the fore, instincts sharp, eyeing everything around her. Benign beauty, the lulling stream gurgling delightedly, the birds… "Mistress?"

"Listen," she said softly, trying to sit up tall as she could in the saddle. Ridges tumbled ahead, the fresh new leaves of spring concealing what winter would have laid bare; it was a wall of misleading rock, flickering leaves, distracting water.

"Ach, the birds? They willna sing with us so close," Jamie said offhandedly.

"Not further away," Lillian said darkly, eyeing the horizons, the ridges, the mountains looming overhead. As before, she listened to her instincts, the quiet of the wood was unnerving; it was true the birds wouldn't be singing with them so close, but that wouldn't stop the birds singing in other parts of the wood. "My father once told me the Army patrol this range."

Jamie's body stilled behind her, muscles coiling with tension.

"It's a bonnie place for an ambush, right enough," he said slowly, sapphire-blue eyes sharp as they examined the ridges ahead. On a sigh, he clicked his tongue, digging in his heels, and his horse trotted on, catching up to Dougal Mackenzie on his dappled grey pony. While Jamie conversed in tense Gaelic with Dougal, she kept her eyes on their surroundings. The other men had drawn in the reins, watching carefully, listening to Jamie and Dougal's conversation.

"Now, you'll be telling me exactly how and why you come to know there's an ambush up ahead," Dougal growled. She gave him a withering look.

"I don't _know_ ," she said curtly. "But this area has an excellent vantage over the surrounding countryside, I can't hear any birds singing, and this range has a history of being patrolled by the Redcoats."

"A _history_ , does it?" Dougal glowered.

"Yes. I would have thought a War Chief would recognise the imminent danger in a place like this," she said coolly. She wasn't going to deny she had military experience; being married to a soldier and giving the impression her father had been an Army surgeon gave her a good background for knowledge of both military tactics and medicine. Dougal's pale eyes narrowed, again bringing to mind a hawk eagle – with a beard.

His eyes slid onto Jamie, the two communicating without words. Dougal raised his hand, signalling the other men, and before she realised what was happening, Jamie had whipped his arm out of his belt-sling, grabbed her around the waist and tipped her backwards and off the horse.

" _Son of a whore_!" she yelped inelegantly as the world tipped on its axis, head tumbling over ankles, stomach in her throat, the breath knocked out of her on impact with the frozen ground, just missing the river. Her tartan billowed over her, temporarily blinding her; she heard Jamie yell "Hide yerself!" and as she swiped her tartan out of her face, saw him spur on his horse, galloping headlong into an ambush. She heard screams, the clash of steel, musket shots, the thunder of horse's hooves – shaking her head, dizzy from the fall, aching from the saddle and her back and right shoulder aching from impact when Jamie had dumped her off the horse, she kept low, folding her tartan neatly and carefully, crossing the river in a few strides. She was exhausted, but hadn't realised just how much until her arms shook, hauling herself up an enormous beech tree. One branch, another, hauling herself twenty feet above everything, concealed by the bright new leaves, by younger trees. She reached a sturdy upper-branch and settled in, unfurling her tartan and wrapping herself in it entirely, concealing her black leathers and coat, her red hair. She smiled to herself.

 _Hide yerself_ , he'd said. Hide-and-seek had always been her favourite game with Granddad. It was too easy to scare Bridie. But he'd been a wily old fox. Appropriate – their family coat-of-arms featured two of them.

It had probably taken her as long to reach her new roost as for the men to deal with the Redcoats, who must suddenly have found themselves the prey rather than predators lying in wait in the rocks. She heard another ringing clash, a few screams, the bang of a musket shot echoing distortedly through the valley, and then rich chuckles, the easy conversation of happy men. Perhaps it was her imagination, but the easy laughter gave way to disturbed murmurings, and in no time at all three horses came cantering into the clearing where Jamie had dumped her from his horse.

There he was. Her patient. She sighed impatiently at his right arm, holding his bloody claymore aloft, blood soaked through the torn linen of his shirt, splattered over his face. She watched from her perch, wondering what they would do – he was accompanied by Murtagh and Dougal, both grim-faced. And it took them a moment to realise she had disappeared into the wind. Propped up in their saddles, looking perplexed, Murtagh casually cleaned his wicked dirk with a cloth, eyes travelling idly across the ground. She remembered how soundlessly he had moved, how like a squirrel he had been, hopping down from his pony. A tracker. Dougal glared around, the sun gleaming off his shaved head. Jamie blinked blood out of his eyes, swiping his forearm irritably across them, panting with exertion.

"She couldna have gone far," Jamie said with confidence, his massive chest heaving.

"Maybe," Murtagh said softly, eyes scanning the ground. "Knew what she was about with that ambush; I'd wager she's picked up a thing or two aboot surviving out here." She had decided that, despite herself, she liked Murtagh's quiet voice, his unassuming presence. The lethal edge that lay hidden beneath the quiet, self-possessed exterior. Her lips twitching, muffled by her tartan, she whistled an uncanny likeness to a robin's song, soft and delicate on the breeze. She wondered if they would catch it.

"Mistress Egan!" Jamie called, eyes alert as he glanced around the clearing by the river. He and Dougal climbed off their mounts, searching the area.

"She canna have just disappeared into the trees," Dougal growled irritably, stomping away. Jamie looked perplexed; Murtagh chuckled softly to himself, passing a whetstone over the sharp edge of his dirk before sliding it back into its sheath. Smiling to herself, watching sharp Murtagh as the other two men scoured the area, she muffled the robin's call again. Granddad had taught her the art of mimicking birdsong; they'd made a game of it, a code almost, playing pranks on Bridie whenever they had lured her out to go camping with them.

"Fly down from yer high perch, pretty robin," Murtagh said gently, his eyes on her tree. Jamie and Dougal both glanced at Murtagh, following his gaze, and she smiled down at him as she peeled the tartan away from her, revealing her bright hair and the unmissable blackness of her clothing amongst the silvery, pale-green leaves.

"What're ye doing up there!" Jamie called, sounding almost angry, as she rose to her feet, balancing precariously. "You'll fall."

"Won't. You told me to hide. I hid. Have you made sure there aren't others?" Lillian called down, aware of the taunting edge to her voice. "I don't want to be caught unawares – and unarmed."

"Aye, you're helpless as a wee lamb," Murtagh said ironically, and her lips twitched in a smirk.

"Get your arse down from that tree this minute," Dougal growled.

"Excuse me, my arse is none of your concern. And I won't come down Handsome apologises."

The men blinked; she rolled her eyes but gestured at Jamie, whose eyes popped in indignation. "Apologises! For what?"

"For dumping me off your horse like I was a saddlebag," Lillian said. She might have bruised her tailbone; she'd know as soon as she got on that damned horse.

"Weigh more'n one," Jamie muttered to herself, and Murtagh cast him a sidelong look as Lillian's eyebrows rose dangerously. "You couldna be hurt, climbing so high."

"You could have broken my neck!"

"Och, there's naught bruised but yer pride," Jamie said offhandedly.

"Pride, my arse! It would have taken you two seconds to _ask_ me to hop off the horse, and then you could've gone and gotten yourself riddled with musket-balls to your heart's content," Lillian said.

"Doona worry lass, this lot isna my blood," Jamie said, giving her a self-assured smirk she wanted to smack right off his face. Jamie irritated and amused her in equal turns, she had discovered during their ride. "Not all of it anyway."

"Mistress Egan, the lad's been hurt," Murtagh said gently.

"Which lad?" Lillian asked, eyes on Jamie glaring up at her accusingly.

"The young'n, Willie," Murtagh sighed softly. "Stuck twixt the ribs."

* * *

 **A.N.** : Please review! I thought I'd show a few of Lillian's other talents, just to set her even more apart from eighteenth-century women.


	6. The Game

**A.N.** : I was inspired by _The 100_ for this little bit – it establishes her as even more of a physician than what Claire exhibited in canon – anyone can bandage a wound (she says, growing faint at the idea of a gaping wound!)

* * *

 **A Mhaighdean Bhan Uasal**

 _06_

* * *

"With what?"

"One o' the short knives all Redcoats carry," Murtagh said casually.

"Did anyone pull it out?" she asked.

"Nay, that's yer job," Dougal growled.

"Good. You should have said someone was hurt immediately," she said coolly. She rolled up her tartan, balanced precariously on the branch twenty-feet above the men. She then dropped the roll. "Catch!" Murtagh wasn't the only one who could move like a squirrel; and with her red hair she resembled one far better as she scaled down the tree, swinging, testing her weight on different branches, gripping with her thighs and fingertips, dropping with a practiced jump from the lowest branch to her feet, bouncing a little to soften the impact. Jamie had caught the tartan, which had unfurled in the fall, draping it over his lap; she caught him watching her legs as she turned, dusting her hands.

Dougal snapped something in Gaelic to the others; Murtagh clicked his tongue, and they both dug their heels into their mounts, disappearing into the thickets and ridges that had concealed their would-be assassins.

The climb had done her good; she would happily walk to Leoch if it meant she didn't have to get back in the saddle. She didn't mind being pressed up against a strange man; but she was _sore_. Her army training and workouts had never involved riding horseback, and it was a different type of exercise than she was used to, working muscles she didn't know she had. Muscles screaming in protest, she paused to stretch her legs, grimacing.

"We should go," Jamie said tersely. He hopped off his horse, swinging a leg over its neck and flashing a good deal of muscled thigh, his kilt whirling around his knees as he landed. He jerked his head at the horse, offering his free hand. She pulled her foot up behind her, stretching again.

She switched legs. "That feels better!"

"What're ye doing?"

"Stretching – I'm that sore," she sighed. She couldn't exactly do a full pilates workout in front of him, but she was dying to. "Just need to stretch my legs."

"Willie needs ye now," Jamie growled, approaching her so they were almost nose-to-nose. Blood splattered one side of his face, sweat and the earlier rain had plastered his curls to his head. "Now will ye come, or shall I pick you up, and throw you over my shoulder?"

She shot him a grin that seemed to startle him. "How _titillating_. As your physician, I would advise that with your shoulder, you shouldn't be carrying anything. But I'll reconsider at a later date." She smiled pleasantly, ignoring the fluttering in her stomach as she replayed that flicker of muscled thigh, and the thought that had accompanied her first glimpse, a sighed, appreciative, _Rugby-player's thighs_ …

 _Damn_ , she sighed, still smiling lazily. Those thighs pressed against hers again, settled in the saddle once more with Jamie flush behind her, steaming from exertion in the growing cold. The sky had darkened; she would guess they had little more than an hour before the last light faded.

She grimaced as he clicked his tongue and the horse sped up, bringing them into a rocky bend of the river that gave an excellent view of the glade, concealing them from sight in turn. The men, save Murtagh and a couple of the others, were letting their horses graze while they could, filling water-skins for the journey, muttering darkly to each other as they moved bodies covered in scarlet wool; the young man Willie lay unconscious, white as a sheet, the handle of a knife sticking from his ribcage, several of the men crowded around him, clucking and groaning, grim-faced.

Jamie helped her down from the horse, unbuckling her pack for her as she approached Willie, all focus drawn to the knife sticking into his side. She swatted the large men away.

"I need room to work," she said quietly, clambering down beside him, squatting down and peering close at the blade. Someone had wrapped a cloth around the blade to stem the bleeding, but it was already soaked through. The blade had missed Willie's coat but torn his waistcoat and shirt. An eighteenth-century shirt was not buttoned down the front; it was draped over the head, tied at the neck and wrists, tucked into his trousers – like a couple of the other men he wore trousers rather than a great-kilt.

Focused intently on unbuttoning Willie's waistcoat, untucking his shirt so she could lift it over the wound – the loose shirts these men wore were ideal for this. She'd have had more problems with a button-down. The linen shirt free, pushed up to Willie's chin, she eyed the hilt of the knife, counted his ribs, and frowned.

 _This won't do_ , she thought. She couldn't _guess_.

"Jamie, if he wakes, don't let him remove that knife." It was natural instinct, to remove what was causing pain. Jamie nodded, features serious. Pushing to her feet, legs screaming in protest after the long ride and climbing the tree, she strode over to the pile of bodies that had only a few minutes ago been soldiers of the realm. She tilted her head to one side, surprised; the bodies still had weapons strapped to them, moved out of the way but not picked over. So they weren't opportunists. Well, she needed to be.

When she strode back to Willie, she made a point of _not_ concealing the fact she had the suede sheath of a gorgeous knife tucked into one boot, a finely-crafted pistol in the other without a belt to clip it to. Her pockets were heavy with lead balls, a leather pouch of powder, handfuls of polished buttons from the soldiers' uniforms, and she was up a few pennies, six farthings, a couple of shillings and, unusually for a soldier of the rank she had taken it from, a crown. She had left the fine sea-blue ribbon, and the lock of golden hair, inside the breast-pocket of one of the soldiers, but taken his silver signet-ring.

Dangling from her hand was a knife on a belt, identical to the ones every soldier wore, all but one, who'd met his end with a vicious swipe of a claymore from shoulder to thigh; it had been his knife he plunged into Willie's chest. She wondered whether Jamie had despatched the man who had stabbed Willie, remembering he had held his sword aloft, riding back to the tree she had hidden herself in.

Willie was still unconscious, deathly pale. Jamie glanced up, expression tense for the briefest moment before he realised the approaching footsteps belonged to her; he clocked her new pistol and knife instantly, but didn't comment. He frowned at the knife dangling from the belt in her hand.

"I need to take a look at the knife before I can remove this one," she explained quietly, checking the hilt was identical to the one sticking from Willie's ribcage. They were Army-issue and likely forged by the same blacksmith, probably at whatever garrison the unfortunate soldiers had been stationed. She turned to her pack, bringing out her sewing-kit, her all-natural, potent plant-based antiseptic ointment and bandages, before she even looked closer at the wound.

"Someone give me some whisky," she said, unlooping her cowl, shrugging off her coat and biting the tip of her gloves to peel them off, clambering over to the water to wash her grubby hands as thoroughly as she could, using her handkerchief. The whisky was ready for her by her sewing-kit; the men had moved off, giving her some space.

"Can ye save him?" Jamie asked, white-faced and wincing, glancing from Lillian to the knife jutting from Willie's ribcage.

Lillian frowned, delicately peeling the bloody cloth away from the knife, inspecting the damage. "The blade is lodged between the sixth and seventh rib, but there's no fluid which means the pleural membrane is intact – he's very lucky. Well…in some respects."

"In some respects?" She didn't answer Jamie, intent on the blade she had borrowed from a dead soldier, unsheathing it, examining the blade intently. Six inches long, this one's owner kept it sharp and clean; there was a good three inches of blade visible sticking out of Willie's chest.

"Mistress Egan?" Jamie said gently. "What are ye thinking?" Lillian glanced up, letting out a slow breath. She swallowed, clearing her throat, and let out another breath before answering.

"Based on the length of the blade and the angle, if I'm just a whisker off, I could lacerate the aorta when I extract the knife," she said, not feeling nearly as calm and collected as she sounded.

"What does _that_ mean?" Rupert asked, looking suitably ashen despite his confusion. He recognised her tone, if not her medical language.

"It means that I could end up piercing his heart with the knife while I'm trying to remove it," Lillian said calmly, using a skin of water to rinse the blood from Willie's ribs.

"So he'll die?" Jamie blanched.

"Instantly," Lillian said calmly.

"I warned ye, I said the lad was too green to come wi' us!" Rupert burst, glaring around at the other men. "An' now look at him! His mother will have my hide!"

She watched Rupert carefully, frowning, "Someone give him some whisky. What happened?" she asked, glancing at Jamie. With the old blood rinsed away, she could see clearly there was no other fluid, and the blood-flow had stemmed somewhat.

"He was protecting my right," Jamie admitted quietly. "In the strumush."

"So the greenest soldier had the instinct to cover the most vulnerable amongst you. Hm," Lillian pulled an arch face, letting them exactly what she thought of young Willie – and of them. She set up her things, threaded suture needle soaking in her stainless-steel camping coffee-cup with a few inches of raw whisky, a pad of gauze ready, a roll of bandages beside it. She was running out of clean flannels – she had packed five clean red terry-cloth ones, had used two on Jamie. They'd need to be boiled if she wanted to use them again. "I'll need someone to assist."

For a moment, they all froze, glancing uncertainly at each other, probably wondering what she meant.

"I'll do it," Rupert said, his amiable face grim, pale. She wondered if there was a family-connection; Willie was young enough to be his son.

"You're not his father, are you?" she asked sternly.

"Nay," Rupert blustered. "His mother named me responsible for the lad, is all."

She watched him shrewdly. "You're not going to get flustered and excitable, are you? I can't have you getting upset."

"I can do it," Jamie offered.

"No." She swung her head toward Jamie, wide-eyed. The fresh blood still shone brilliant crimson against his filthy shirt – who knew if it had soaked through his bandage to his stitched gunshot wounds. " _You_ are going to make sure none of that blood has soaked through the bandages and got into your wounds. You're going to _sit there_ with your arm back in that sling, and you're not going to move a muscle until I expressly order you to."

"You wish me tae sit here? Just here," Jamie said, his tone flirtatious, eyes sparkling as he indicated the spot where she pointed. She narrowed her eyes.

" _Sit_."

He sat. Looking as contrite as her five-year-old nephew caught shaving his youngest-sister's head, for all of five minutes, before he sprawled his legs out in front of him, yawning idly in the late-evening sunshine, propped up by his good arm, his right draped in his makeshift sling but fiddling idly with his dirk. Blood still smeared his face, he was filthy, but he looked supremely relaxed. She rolled her eyes, irritated, and turned to Rupert. "Go and wash your hands in the stream, I'll need you to be quick with these flannels." Rupert did as asked, kneeling on Willie's other side; she had him rub whisky into his hands, holding the flannel ready, and said, calmly and confidently, "As soon as I whip the blade out I want you to press this down hard against the wound until I tell you to remove it." It wasn't _hard_ work the way setting Jamie's shoulder had been physically straining; it was just fiddly, and her nerves were fried from exhaustion. Still, in the past she had stayed awake longer and, out of necessity, had to assist in trickier procedures.

"I'm going to need to angle the blade upwards and to the left when I extract to avoid the heart, but if he moves…" Lillian told Rupert, who nodded grimly; his eyes widened in alarm as Willie moaned and writhed. Of course he'd be waking up _now_. "Willie. Willie, can you hear me, it's Lillian Egan."

"I hear ye," he said faintly. "Wha's happened?"

"You were stabbed," Lillian said lightly. "Rupert and I are going to sort you out, but you have to stay absolutely still." Eyes glazed with pain and uncertainty tried to focus on her; a brilliant crimson rivulet of blood leaked from the wound in his side as Willie squirmed. He started panting, in visible discomfort, pain mingling with his awareness. "Willie, you have to stay still."

"Yes, Mistress," he panted, and she saw him visibly trying to hold his breath.

"Breathe in, and exhale slowly, that's it. You're alright, Willie, we've got you," she said gently. "I'm going to pull the knife out, but you _can't move_." She positioned herself, gave Willie a nod, exhaled slowly herself, and pulled. The blade came free, Rupert clamped a clean flannel over it, and the other men seemed to let out a collective breath. She eyed the blade; no part of it had broken off inside Willie's body, excellent. She didn't want to have to go digging with her whisky-dunked tweezers. She set the knife aside, and glanced up when the whisky skin moved of its own accord; Jamie poured a good measure over her proffered hands, and she rubbed them together, dipping two fingers into her cup for the suture-needle. "Alright, Rupert, if you could just roll Willie toward you, so that the wound is at the highest point – yes, that's good. Willie, I'm going to have to pour alcohol onto the wound to kill inflammation, it'll sting worse than a horse-fly bite." She glanced over at Jamie, who gave her a curt nod, still holding the whisky skin. She locked eyes with Rupert, already holding the suture needle ready.

"Alright, Rupert, if you could gently rub away any excess blood… Jamie, the whisky – that's enough," she said gently, as Willie inhaled sharply, grimacing.

"You were right," he panted, sweat shining all over his face. "Did sting, but twas no' so bad as a horse-fly bite."

"I'm going to stitch you up now… Rupert tells me this is your first time out with them," Lillian said gently, aware the white-faced Willie was craning his neck to see down to where she was working on him. Jamie had moved away, but Rupert held Willie in the position for her to sew best.

"Aye," Willie sniffed.

"So, is this a game you didn't tell me about? Each man injured has to outdo the last?" she asked, with a smile, and Willie gave her a shaky laugh.

"Dinna mean to," he said. "Me mum will kill me."

"Yer mum'll kill _me_ ," Rupert corrected him.

"Well, at least you'll have a decent scar to show off to the girls at home," she smiled down at him, stitching away. A hint of colour touched his cheeks. "So, is there one in particular?"

"A lass? No," Willie shook his head, avoiding her eye. She smiled to herself.

"What's her name?" she asked, with a coaxing smile. She shrugged unconcernedly. "I probably couldn't pronounce it anyway." She kept stitching. "What are her breasts like?" Rupert started, and Willie stared at her with owl-eyes.

"I canna talk about such things in front of ye," he gasped, thunderstruck. Her lips twitched.

"Why not? I'm more familiar with breasts than any of you," she said softly, smiling, and she heard a strangled cough from beside her. "Are they high, and pretty? Or large, and look magnificent in her best dress?" Rupert was staring at her, agog. "Alright, I won't press the issue, we're making Rupert blush. If you won't tell me about her breasts, what about her eyes. She has some, I suppose? Two, with any luck, right in the middle of her face."

"Aye," Willie said, a slow smile curling his white lips. "Green."

"Pretty," Lillian smiled.

"But she doesna look twice at me," Willie said, wincing slightly.

"Mm," Lillian tilted her head. "Well, then, she probably isn't worth your while. Life's too short to pine away, forlorn. _Carpe diem_."

"What's that, then?" Willie asked, frowning.

"It means 'Seize the day'," Lillian smiled, snipping the thread. "There. All stitched."

"That was all?" Willie asked, blinking, and Lillian let out a scoffed laugh, shaking her head, as the men chortled.

" _That was all_ ," she said, rolling her eyes. She'd worked quickly and neatly, using Willie's distraction to her advantage. "Only a stab to the ribcage that was a breath from piercing your heart." She smiled wanly, reaching for the fourth of her five clean flannels, using it and some more whisky to cleanse the stitched wound site, making Willie stiffen, inhaling sharply. She smeared ointment over the stitches. "Right, Rupert's going to help prop you up, I need to bandage you." She nodded to Rupert, who helped lift Willie's torso off the ground; she pressed a wad of gauze over the wound, deftly wrapping a bandage around his ribcage, tying it in a neat knot that would hold better than the ropes Murtagh had used on her, at any rate.

She pulled Willie's shirt down, buttoned his waistcoat. "How do you feel?"

"Aye, can ye ride?" an irritable voice growled.

"He shouldn't be going anywhere," Lillian answered for him. As young as he was, already injured while the other men stood drinking whisky, watching him being patched up, on his first run with them, Lillian didn't have to be told Willie wouldn't want to appear anything less than a man in their eyes. He'd climb back on his horse and ride until he dropped, if only he didn't have to feel ashamed for needing medical attention, for being caught by the knife at all.

And he did just that. They had another night's ride ahead of them; Dougal seemed itching to get home, and he wasn't of a mind to leave Willie behind – not with anyone. He didn't say it, but he didn't have to; he didn't want to risk the men he'd need to stand guard over _her_ when she asked that a small group including Jamie and Willie follow behind, to give them some time to recover. Willie was white as a sheet, but at Dougal's unrelenting glare at her, he straightened his shoulders and hauled himself into the saddle of his pony on shaking arms.

"Doona worry, Mistress," Jamie said softly in her ear, when she had stifled the anger flaring up in her stomach. She had washed her hands thoroughly in the icy water, splashing it over her face to wake herself up. If Willie didn't want to appear weak in front of the men he so obviously admired, that was his bad decision to make; she'd just have to be there to help him when he _did_ fall off his horse. "We Highlanders are made of strong stuff."

"He lost a lot of blood," Lillian murmured, dabbing her face dry with her cowl before slipping it on over her head. The last light of the day had fled, chased away by a wind that pinched her nose. Jamie gave her a quiet, thoughtful look.

"Then we shall ride close beside him," he said, shrugging. "Ye know there's a chance he's worse than he appears. Ye can treat him."

"He needs a warm bed, and he needs to stay there for a week," Lillian said quietly, eyeing Jamie. "So do you."

Jamie frowned. "Share a bed wi' Willie?" He shot her a charming smile, and she learned then that he couldn't wink. He sort of blinked both eyes very slowly; it was endearing, very… _human_. "Well, I like the lad well enough, but I would rather no'." She reached over, reaching just under his kilt to pinch the back of his thigh playfully. He jerked out her way, grinning playfully, eyes widening slightly at her brazenness. His lovely grin turned into a grimace as he reached to buckle her pack to the saddle with his right arm.

"I told you not to move it," she chided gently, more tired than annoyed.

"If I hadna moved my arm, I'd never have moved anything else," Jamie said unconcernedly. "I can handle a single Redcoat one-handed, maybe two. But no' three." His teeth flashed in the last dying flickers of light, the sky a bright silver…she tasted snow on the air, and unfurled her tartan as soon as they were on the horse, twirling it around them. "Tis right we keep moving, even if the lad is in discomfort." She shot a frown over her shoulder. "Randall will have search parties scouring the land for us." She stifled a scoff; she doubted very highly if Captain Randall was in a position to do anything at present besides moan in agony.

"What does he matter?"

"Matters," Jamie said, in a strange voice. He heaved a sigh, murmuring, "I want to rescue anyone taken prisoner by that man."

" _Man_ has a very broad definition," Lillian said in a low voice, and Jamie gave that male grunting noise again.

"Aye. Had ye no' been able tae patch me up, I'd have asked Dougal an' the others tae leave me in the cottar with a loaded pistol, so that I might choose my own fate," Jamie said, with a sigh.

"That's rather drastic," she said softly. He made that soft noise again.

"I would wish Randall upon no-one but himself," Jamie said thoughtfully. Speaking close in her ear, making her stifle a shiver, he said softly, "I'm verra glad Murtagh found ye at Craigh na dun. Wouldna care tae think what pleasures he'd take on ye if he thought ye had no protection." She shifted uncomfortably, visions of Joffrey Baratheon and the stag sceptre and the whores making her wince. But a smile nagged at her lips; she wasn't unprotected.

"I can handle myself," Lillian said softly.

"Aye," Jamie rumbled gently. "That ye can. Doona ken Dougal knows what tae do with ye."

"He's not used to strong women?"

"No."

"So I shall be an education," she smiled tiredly.

"Careful, lass," Jamie warned softly, his lips brushing against the tip of her ear, making her shiver, "that old dog does no' learn new tricks." She had a retort on the tip of her tongue before she bit it, sighing softly; she'd wanted to say, _He will if he wants to survive_ , but that could be taken in a multitude of ways. And she didn't particularly want to feel the lethal edge of Jamie's dirk, handle pressing against her hip, against her throat.

Having doused herself in ice-water, and fixated on the knowledge that a stabbing-victim was bumping along on horseback, spine curved, head drooping, chin bumping against his chest as snow whirled silently around them, kept her sharp and focused. Jamie slept against her again, cuddled up completely unconcerned that they were strangers. The rest of the men were quiet, only giving the occasional grumble as their ponies stumbled in the dark, or they had to swipe snow from their eyes, but it was a quiet journey, the snow muffling the ponies' footsteps – she had new respect for the Fellowship taking Sam's poor pony Bill up through the snowy passes of Caradhras. The ponies were steaming in the moonlight, in the snow, probably the warmest creatures around. Snow had started to fall about two hours after sunset; there was a gentleness to the fresh snow drifting around her, the tiny specks of white glinting in the moonlight, dusting her cheeks and the tip of her nose and her eyelashes with the softest kisses. It limited the field of vision, muffling sound, and she felt…oddly _safe_. Cocooned, with searing muscle pressed to her back, warming her, wool wrapped all around her, the sturdy strength of the horse beneath her, it was _cosy_. She had relaxed into Jamie's slumbering body, her shoulder his pillow, arm wrapped gently around her waist, his calloused fingers wrapped almost tenderly around the reins in sleep.

At least until she saw Willie tilting in his saddle. She jerked on the reins, startling Jamie awake, and almost fell out of the saddle, dragging him with her as she fought against her tartan, wrapped around them. She swung her leg over the horse's neck, stumbling a few steps in the dark, but caught Willie before he could fall to the ground.

"Foot out of the stirrup," she said, untangling the boy from reins and belts and stirrups. Wrapping his arm around her shoulders, she murmured comfortingly to Willie, "I've got you, alright, just lean on me." He seemed to pour out of his saddle, guided by her strength. He was ashen, eyes glazed, covered in sweat, his cheekbones hollowed; she got him onto the verge before he doubled over, heaving, coughing up what little he had in his stomach. The scent of vomit and alcohol mingled on the snowy air. The ponies snorted, steaming, as the other men drew in the reins, but she ignored them, getting Willie sat down, head between his knees, exhaling slowly. She rubbed his back, murmuring to him. He needed to be in bed; he was lucky his body hadn't gone into shock, but it was definitely responding to blood-loss and exhaustion.

"Describe how you feel to me," she said gently, blocking out the others but aware Willie was hyper-conscious of them. He was only eighteen; these were grown men, seasoned soldiers.

"No' well, Mistress," Willie murmured, panting. "Dizzy, and hot and cold at once. I canna stop shaking. Still feel as I may vomit again, though I'm tha' hungry, there's naught in my stomach but whisky."

"Well, that won't have helped matters," she said, narrowing her eyes. "Have you been tippling while we've been riding?"

"Jamie says it willna fill my belly, but it'll at least make me forget I'm hungry," Willie said hollowly, head hanging between his knees, expelling a long, shaky breath. Lillian turned to glare toward Jamie, still astride his fine horse, frowning concernedly at Willie.

"Sit there for a bit," she said softly. "Keep breathing slowly, I'll be back in a moment." Her own stomach felt hollow; and daydreams of bacon and eggs had reminded her of the provisions she had packed for herself before leaving Inverness yesterday. Was it yesterday? No, two days ago. Jamie hopped off his horse as he saw her approaching; she shot him a narrow-eyed glare and unbuckled her rucksack from the saddle, digging in blindly.

"Wha's wrong with the lad?" Rupert asked.

"He's been expected to ride through the night after being stabbed," Lillian said drily, tongue between teeth in concentration as she felt around the contents of her pack. Her fingers brushed cool, smooth metal, and she blinked, frowning, at the soft, textured things nearby. _Oranges!_ she gasped. She had bought half a dozen from the greengrocers near the B &B, had eaten three by the time she packed up to leave Inverness. She didn't pause to reflect on how they would look at her, an Englishwoman dressed in a man's clothing, able to stitch stab-wounds and set disjointed shoulders, carrying _oranges_ in the middle of the Highlands in March…

She propped her pack against her legs, digging out the stainless-steel tiffin stack she had taken care of since she was thirteen, and one of the now-precious oranges she had grumbled at paying a couple of quid for. She had considered them worth the money, absolutely delicious, sweet and tangy and bursting with juice – but she wondered now how much a half-dozen oranges of similar quality would set her back here. Hoisting her pack over one shoulder, orange clamped to her side, tiffin-stack held by its handle, she gripped Jamie's strong, biteable chin with her fingers. "And I'll thank _you_ not to give medical advice to _my_ patients!"

"What did I do?" Jamie said indignantly.

"Tell a man who's lost a pint of blood to drink _whisky_!" she sighed, exasperated, though her voice was calm and low. "This is why you bring a woman along: to give you all a hefty dose of common – _bloody_ – sense!"

"Ach, dinna do the boy any harm," Rupert said unconcernedly, waving an airy hand. Lillian arched an eyebrow, glancing from Willie, who had just rolled to his side and heaved, to Rupert.

"Pass me your water-skin," she said, and returned to Willie, rubbing his back, and getting him to swill cold water round his mouth, spitting it out. "Take small sips, and keep breathing slowly, head down." She unclasped the tiffin stack, separating the stainless-steel dishes, and smiled sadly at the contents she found within. Delicious, creamy mature cheddar she'd bought on the cheap – a bargain, considering the quality of the cheese – crisp little oatcakes and handmade Scotch eggs made from quail-eggs, proper sausage-meat and crispy, crunchy breadcrumbs in one tin; the Scotch pie she'd bought spare in the café when she'd had lunch in Inverness, cold but full of flavoursome lamb mince and pepper, nestled snugly in the tin; and in the last one, the very last of Granddad's last jar of pickled onions. The tang of vinegar burst into the snowy air as she popped the lid, staring sadly into the dish, and Willie's head perked up.

"Ye've had that in yer pack, Mistress?" Willie asked in wonder.

"I'd forgotten I had it," she admitted on a sigh. "I've a lot on my mind."

"Aye," Willie said softly, with a subtle glance at the men.

"It's a wrench, sharing this lot with you – you won't find picked-onions like these for love nor money," she said sorrowfully. "And that cheese is something special too. Eat up that whole pie, and keep sipping that water."

"Ye want me tae eat, Mistress?"

"I know you don't feel like you can," she said, sympathetic to the nausea now roiling in his stomach, now lessened by the fact he had expelled a vast quantity of raw whisky from it, "but it'll do you good. Stop the dizziness and nausea." Willie sighed, wincing dubiously, but he accepted the palm-sized hot-crust pie she picked out of her tiffin jar with two fingers. In her opinion, the Scotch pie was only improved as a meal by a poached egg on top. The fatty sweetness of the lamb, the spice and heat of the ground black pepper, the hot-crust pastry making it a perfect meal to eat on the go. Even if it was a few days old. "Jamie. Come here, you'd better have something too – though you've done nothing to deserve it."

"I was injured same as Willie."

"Willie took a knife to the chest for you," Lillian sniffed, clamping the lid on her Granddad's pickled-onions. They were _hers_. Willie started nibbling slowly at the pie, alternating between bites and sips of water, gradually making the appreciative noises she usually made when she ate something delicious. She was a food person. She had found they made the best sort of people. No-one who appreciated good food could be altogether evil. Jamie approached, and she carefully offered him an oatcake with a slice of cheddar. "Who did _you_ catch the musket-ball for?"

"A few cows."

"You got yourself shot stealing _cattle_." She rolled her eyes in the dark, listening to the snap and munch of the oatcake disappearing, and nibbled at the last of the oatcakes and cheese, relishing each bite, conscious of how tiny her stomach now seemed. Glancing at Willie in the dark, she saw he was making quick work of the pie, despite savouring each bite. She would guess he couldn't find pies like that one for love nor money, either. She passed the water-skin to Jamie, making him take a good few mouthfuls, took some herself, and they each had a mini Scotch egg – Jamie making a few guttural noises of approval; he was a food person too. They were delicious, and she regretted not being able to properly savour them. She started busying herself with peeling the orange, the burst of citrus entirely alien in her present surroundings; the lads smelled it, and she could see Jamie's curls glinting in the moonlight as he tilted his head to the side.

"You've a citrus?!"

"Mm. An orange. Good to boost your blood-sugar levels," she said softly, still peeling, her stomach aching. "It'll help stop the nausea and faintness." Murmuring in the dark, she said to Jamie, "I don't suppose Dougal could be convinced to let us stay behind for a few hours' rest?"

"No' a chance," Jamie murmured in a low tone by her ear, as she eyed the orange-peel, considering the benefit of keeping it. But penicillin mould grew with how many other strains harmful to humans? The risk outweighed the benefits of trying to create her own penicillin strain…maybe. "We've only a few more hours tae go, at most. If Willie can get back on his horse."

"I don't think he'd dare _not_ to," Lillian said quietly, listening to the sound of the segments of orange peeling from each other. She counted them by touch, fingers dripping with juice. "Have you finished?"

"Aye, Mistress," Willie said, his voice sounding stronger already. "It was a verra nice pie."

"I should hope so," she said quietly. "Here. We'll share the orange. Don't eat the pips." She gave the boys – and they were boys, compared to Dougal and Murtagh and Rupert and Angus – segments of the orange, and juice burst into her mouth, sweet and tangy, as she ate her own third, a segment at a time. She turned her head to spit the pips out delicately, wondering if either of them had ever eaten an orange before – but Jamie had recognised the smell, she remembered.

She clamped the tiffin stack back together, pickled-onions and the remaining Scotch eggs safe inside the stainless-steel, tucked everything back into her rucksack, licked orange-juice from her sticky fingers, and hoisted herself back into the saddle once Willie was settled on his pony, sitting up noticeably straighter, brighter-eyed and no longer sweating and ashen. _Men_ , she thought scornfully, tucking her tartan around him, ignoring his protests. Using his good left hand Jamie hefted her into the saddle, leaping up behind her. She licked the last of the orange juice from her fingers and pulled on her gloves.

"Took ye long enough," Dougal growled from somewhere up ahead. She sighed to herself, biting her tongue; she was too tired to engage in an argument. But in her mind, they wouldn't have lost out anything by stopping for an hour or two to give the boys a rest, rather than the stop-and-start in random places, dealing with two young men pressuring themselves to _not_ admit to any discomfort or pain in front of their elders.

"Lead on!" she called, tugging her cowl up over her head and snuggling back into Jamie's broad chest, aware of the loss of her tartan. She frowned at Jamie fidgeting restlessly behind her, murmuring to him, "What's the matter?"

"Tryin' tae get my plaid free tae cover ye," he said softly, grimacing at the effort. "I canna do it one-handed." His right arm was tucked against his chest in the makeshift sling of Angus' belt. Her lips twitched as she remembered him sat cross-legged on the ground by freshly-bandaged Willie, asking with imploring wide eyes whether he was allowed to move yet, tone flirtatious. Still, he was learning. "You're shivering so hard, it's making my teeth rattle."

"Thank you," she said. Without the tartan encasing them, she was starting to feel the cold. It wasn't too bad, there was sleet instead of snow if it was too cold, but the wool of her tartan had been so deliciously warm. She helped him free the plaid that hung loose from his great-kilt, a full twelve yards of tartan draped around him, some of it free to blanket her, cuddling up close. She tried not to feel the comforting weight of his arm draped around her waist; or his warmth; but she was finding it increasingly difficult not to hold her breath whenever he spoke, listening to the rolling Rs and lulling Ts, the brogue at once rough and soothing, making her shiver in spite of herself whenever he murmured in her ear. Yes, the cold was making her shiver. Not his voice. Never.

She gratefully wrapped the tartan around herself, remembering the subtle differences in colour of Jamie's tartan from the other men's – all but Murtagh's. A clan's tartan was their fingerprint, personal and meticulously different from any other. Whoever Murtagh and Jamie were, they were of a different clan than Dougal, Rupert and the others. _Interesting_ …

Bumping along at a steady pace, exhaustion pouring from the slope of the men's shoulders and bowed heads, yawns stifled as the birds picked up their song early, snow still whirling softly around them, the first sign of dawn approached; the snow had had little staying-power, melting on her coat, Jamie's tartan, the horse's mane, but a good six inches had built up either side of their ambling caravan's path, and it was the snow on the ground and glittering softly in the air that gave them a private approach to the castle, people locked indoors by their fires, tending to indoor chores if they could help from stepping outside.

Since dawn, woods had given way to sprawling farms, clusters of buildings dating from medieval times to stables built of raw, new timber, shaggy highland cows steaming in huddles in wide open meadows, new lambs bleating at the foreign stuff falling from the sky, a few milkmaids heading to their work and shepherds ensuring the survival of the fruits of the ongoing lambing season, and they bypassed a large village, more a town by eighteenth-century standards, trotting around the edges rather than through the main square, to the winding path that led up over a wide bridge to a gentle loch, and the castle that presided over it. The great stone structure rose proud and grim, more a giant house than anything, without battlements or any traditional accessories she usually associated with castles. Winterfell it was not, but Castle Leoch rose half-shrouded from the fog rolling off the loch as the sun peeked through the clouds, making the snow glitter, light flashing off the diamond-paned windows of the castle, shimmering softly off the perfectly serene loch.

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 **A.N.** : What do you think? Next, we meet the indomitable Mrs Fitz. I miss her.


	7. Mrs Fitz

**A.N.** : Please review.

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 **A Mhaighdean Bhan Uasal**

 _07_

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Used to the quiet of the woods and the soft clip-clopping of the ponies, the men's tired grunts, it was odd, almost jarring, to hear the thick Scottish burrs echoing off ancient stone, people bustling about, the noise of horses and the ring and chink of busy hammers, the roar of fires and the indistinguishable thrum of noise bubbling up from a muddy courtyard, where a blacksmith was tending to his forge and a small stables made the ponies whinny and snort for oats and fresh water, and rest.

Jamie pulled the reins gently, his horse sidling to a halt. She tried to slip out of the saddle, and after a good five hours' continuous riding, discovered that her legs had seized, muscles not cramping but completely unresponsive. She blinked, uncertain what to do; exhaustion, that marrow-deep disorientation and accompanying out-of-body delirium, had settled on her, she was little more than a walking corpse capable only of simply taking in everything around her with vague interest, brain processing things slowly, as if seeing them through a warped window, or after a few too many pints.

Jamie had flung himself from the saddle with ease, yawning and already fiddling around with various buckles, offering his horse a handful of oats from the small stables by the forge. It was Murtagh who noticed her frozen in the saddle; he offered her a wry smile, taking her by the waist and, with surprising strength for a man of his stature, lifted her off the horse.

"Take a turn aboot the courtyard," he advised, as she grimaced, hunched over, thighs and arse now screaming in protest. "What needs doin' with young Willie?" Willie, her stabbing-victim. The call of a patient drew her out of her bone-deep exhaustion, and she blinked away the fog clouding her mind, starting to move and stretch her legs, pulling up her knees and hugging them, pulling her foot up behind her, annoyed by the cumbersome bulk of the pistol, the knife, stuck in her boots. Legs tingling unpleasantly, threatening those pins-and-needles that made movement torturous and threatened to tip her over into the mud, she staggered over to Willie. In the bleak morning light, snow swirling idly around them, Willie looked positively cosy, snuggled deep in the folds of her tartan, now pink-cheeked from the cold.

"How do you feel, Willie?" she asked.

"As well as ye look, Mistress," he said quietly, flicking dark eyes over her face concernedly. She gave him a wry smile, deciding she liked him.

"Come on, get down off your high horse," she said, ducking her mouth into her cowl to cover a huge yawn as Willie gave a strained chuckle. Blood starting to flow stronger, physical exertion promoting mental acuity, she became aware of the men hauling themselves off their ponies, exhausted and happy to be home, grumbling and muttering about food and wenches.

"Dougal! Ye're back early, man! We dinna think to see ye before Black Friday," a thick Scottish brogue rumbled, and she saw a weather-beaten older man striding up to Dougal.

"We had some luck," Dougal said, and, giving her a glare, added, "Some good. Some bad." He smacked the other man on the arm familiarly, striding off into the castle without a backward glance. Beside her, Rupert heaved himself off his pony, sighing.

"Rupert, ye great fat fart, what have ye done tae my Peggy there?!" the older man scolded, approaching Rupert's pony. "Didna I tell ye to tighten her girth?"

"Let me be, old rat!" Rupert swore impatiently. "We've been riding all night, I doona need you squalling in my ear!" She liked Rupert's accent; he had the kind of voice that would never sound truly angry.

"Did ye never even look at her hooves?" the old man accused gruffly, bending at the waist to pick up the pony's front foot, swiping a large glob of mud from her shoe. "You canna expect any beast to carry around something that weighs as much as you without taking care of the poor creature's feet."

"Like a cow riding a mouse," Angus giggled.

"Shut yer hole," Rupert replied good-naturedly, and glanced up as an ecstatic female voice echoed in Gaelic off the high courtyard walls.

"Rupert, m'dear! How good tae see ye," a large woman with a wide, open face like a Jack-o-lantern beamed, opening her arms to Rupert, who stumbled, smiling tiredly, into a crushing embrace. As Lillian helped Willie down from his pony, she secured her tartan over her arm, aware of Jamie fiddling about with his saddle, and listened to the woman's broad accent. "Ye'll all be needin' breakfast, I reckon. Plenty in the kitchen! Off wi' ye! …Murtagh…you look an' smell like a rat that's been dragged through sheep-dung!"

"Give's a kiss, then!" Murtagh taunted, pouncing on the woman, swatting him away; she let out a rich, infectious laugh that made the corners of Lillian's mouth twitch. Murtagh glanced over his shoulder only once, eyes on Lillian as she sorted out Willie, before ducking in through the heavy English-oak doorway.

"And what's this? Young Willie?" the woman said, her face plumping in a concerned grimace, eyes alarmed. A plump hand went straight to Willie's forehead, her features aghast. "Ye look as though ye've been bled dry, eyes like wee-holes in the snow!"

"There were a wee strumush. Lad caught a Redcoat's knife twixt th' ribs," Rupert rumbled proudly, clapping a thick arm around Willie's shoulders, half guiding, half supporting the lad toward a shadowy entrance into the castle. The woman's broad, finely-wrinkled face creased in shock, head whipping around to Willie, suddenly everyone's fierce, protective grandmother, cuddling the boy close – and he looked a boy, standing beside her.

"I'm well," Willie said staunchly. "Mistress Egan tended tae me."

"Mistress… _Egan_ ," the large woman said, hawk eyes turning on Lillian, taking in her leather trousers, the weapons tucked into her boots, the leather pack strapped heavily to her back.

"Mistress Fitzgibbons…Mistress Egan," Jamie said quietly, sidling up as he fiddled with his horse's bridle. In an undertone he addressed the large woman, Mrs Fitzgibbons. "Murtagh found her… She's a physic. Has Dougal's oath to keep her from harm, bring her tae Callum, so…" He shrugged his good shoulder, in a movement that meant, _No point blaming me for it_.

"A physic, Indeed?" Mrs Fitzgibbons said slowly, eyeing Lillian warily. She glanced at Willie. "Was the lad hurt bad?"

"Yes," Lillian said simply. She was too tired to explain, and thought it very unlikely anyone would understand the finer points of anatomy anyway. "He needs rests," Lillian spoke up gently, speaking in general to Willie, to Rupert, and to Mrs Fitzgibbons. She glanced at Willie, "A good meal, and I'll check everything is settling the way I'd like. You need to stay in bed for a few days."

"Wha' about Jamie?" Willie asked, and Mrs Fitzgibbons' eyes turned hawkish, homing in on Jamie flinging a saddle-bag over his left shoulder.

"I'll be fine," he assured them, with a casual smile.

"I'll be the judge of that," Lillian said, voice gentle and firm at once. She curled her finger at him. "Your stitches will need cleansing; I didn't redress them when I stopped to tend to Willie."

"Ach, doona fash yourself," Jamie said, with a glinting smile. "I heal well."

"I didn't spend all that time stitching you back together for sepsis to kill you," Lillian said sternly. She glanced at Mrs Fitzgibbons; there was an aura of power around her, the men all seemed drawn to her, respectful of her. Happy to see her after a long ride. "Jamie was shot by a musket; I've stitched the wounds but they'll need cleansing again to prevent inflammation."

"Ye _sound_ capable eno'," the large woman said, eyes narrowed, cautious and measured.

"I'm a trained physician," Lillian said. There were no _nurses_ , no doctors and paediatricians, no physiotherapists or gynaecologists; midwives weren't regulated by training but practiced through experience, and from her own general knowledge invaluable at Pub Quiz nights, physicians of the eighteenth-century were most often the cause of a patient's death, not the cure. And women were most certainly not trained as physicians; but she was as close as any of these people were ever going to get to the modern standards of health and medicine that most people Lillian knew took for granted. She realised no-one here would know what _sepsis_ was any more than they would know what a _germ_ was that caused infection.

"Jamie," Mrs Fitzgibbons said sharply. "You heard the lady. Ye need tendin'." Giving Jamie a sublimely smug look, confirming what she suspected, that Mrs Fitzgibbons was the authority in this place, Lillian followed Mrs Fitzgibbons as she guided Willie in through that great oak door, chirping to Lillian, "Come along, Mistress Egan, let's get ye outta the snow!"

Blinking, a little awed, as she followed into a dank chamber illuminated by kerosene-soaked torches. Flickering light snatched at the walls, casting eerie shadows, but the hustle and chatter of many bodies working together in a well-practiced team met her at the end of the corridor, a great kitchen opening up, enormous hearth roaring, ovens bursting, young girls and wrinkled women kneading, stirring, tasting, scrubbing, singing away as they avoided the wandering hands and flirtatious kisses of the men who had finally come home, young boys darting about tending to chores. Mrs Fitzgibbons set Willie down on a stool by the enormous table set in the centre of one of the larger chambers, entwined herbs drying from the roof, tables and countertops overflowing. It was like no kitchen she had ever been in – but Granddad had been right. He'd guessed, based on the enormous hearth, that this was the kitchen. It was odd to see it, full to bursting with _life_ , with the scents of rich broths, red wine stews, porridge, dried herbs, the tang of fresh sourdough bread pulled from the ovens with nimble fingers, fluffy-looking bannocks lathered with last summer's honey and preserves for the men, sweet fresh cheese, joints of lamb roasting in the open brick wood-fired oven. Bacon was fried off, rare early-season eggs cracked and cooked as the men liked them, Mrs Fitzgibbons' well-trained team providing them everything they could ask for after fasting for several days.

Not letting herself feel as hungry as she was until she accepted a bowl of beef-and-barley stew, stuffed full with parsnips, carrots and swede chopped small, thyme and other herbs, onion and whole-grain mustard creating a glorious gravy, Lillian groaned and almost stuck her nose into the gravy, inhaling, mouth watering; slowly, savouring every mouthful of melt-in-the-mouth meat and barley, veggies and rich gravy with noises of appreciation most likely considered indecent, given the looks she received, she resolved then and there to live at Castle Leoch eating Mrs Fitzgibbons' beef and barley stew until the day she died. Licking her hand-carved wooden spoon finally, resting it in her bowl (quickly whisked away by a scullery-maid), she said as much to Mrs Fitzgibbons, whose stern face crinkled into an astonishingly gentle, beaming smile.

"Ach, that's kind of ye, Mistress Egan," Mrs Fitzgibbons smiled. "The drippin' makes all the difference, and the mushrooms. Rehydrated in beer before they're added to the cauldron wi' the stock." Lillian licked her lips, eyeing the vat of the stuff, already tempted to tackle another bowl. Mrs Fitzgibbons chuckled, drawing Lillian away from it by hooking her elbow.

"Now, ye're fed and watered, best tend tae the lads 'fore they get too restless," Mrs Fitzgibbons said. "Shouldna have fed them before puttin' them tae their beds, they'll ne'er sleep now."

"We'll see," Lillian said softly. While she had been gorging on that simple, decadent stew, Mrs Fitzgibbons had sent her kitchen-maids scurrying about, collecting everything Lillian asked for; fresh bandages, comfrey, garlic and thyme. She inquired whether Lillian would need leeches, as they'd have to find some fresh.

"No, thank you," she said softly, not batting an eye. "But a few hot compresses for Jamie, I think." Mrs Fitzgibbons nodded; everything Lillian asked for packed into a withy basket, Mrs Fitzgibbons led the way, full skirts billowing around her, through twisting, turning passageways illuminated by the flickering torchlight or, in rare cases, the frigid white glow of diamond-paned windows showing the flurry of snow. Cold emanated in waves from the carved stone, decorated once they reached the more public 'upstairs' passages and chambers, with tapestries, paintings, stuffed heads and the odd suit of armour, furniture dotted about in niches and on odd mezzanines overlooking larger halls.

"Ye have everything you asked for," Mrs Fitzgibbons said, turning into everyone's favourite grandmother, tucking a thick blanket around Willie, shivering in the cold on a stool by the fire while Lillian soaked fresh linen in a small cauldron of thyme and garlic-cloves. "Also brought comfrey and willow-bark for the pain."

"Thank you, Mrs Fitzgibbons," Lillian said in mild wonder. She wouldn't have known where to start, asking for things. But Mrs Fitzgibbons was clearly the authority below-stairs and before she had even asked for it, what she needed was presented in a basket with a curtsy. "This won't take long, I just want to change the bandage, and then I think Willie has earned his bed."

"Aye, tha' he has," Mrs Fitzgibbons said gently, with a fond, sad smile at Willie, who winced as Lillian approached, asking him to move his arm and the blanket aside. A glorious bruise was flourishing around the wound, but there was no drainage; Willie tensed as she probed the skin around the wound with her fingertips gently, and she smiled, pleased.

"If I'd worried you might have internal bleeding, I'm not anymore," she said. "Though it won't have helped matters jolting about on that pony; just at a glance, I'd say you'll heal well. Tuck yourself into bed, eat a few good meals every day, and gently wash the wound with this same solution – I'm sure Mrs Fitzgibbons can arrange for it?" Mrs Fitzgibbons nodded, hands gently resting on Willie's shoulders. "I'll see you in a week's time and evaluate if the stitches can come out. If you're strong enough, go for a short walk but take someone with you. Call for me if you're feverish. The others aren't around to question your manliness if you admit you're poorly."

"I will, thank ye, Mistress," Willie said politely. After wolfing down breakfast in the hall, he already looked better, but she tucked his shirt down over his head carefully, sending him on his way.

"I'll make sure he gets home tae his mother," Mrs Fitzgibbons said.

"Yes, she'll know best how to look after her boy," Lillian smiled softly. Mrs Fitzgibbons nodded, smiling.

"Once you've tended tae Jamie, get ye some rest. I'll return tae help ye bathe and dress," she said.

"Thank you, but…I've nothing else to wear," she said. She couldn't stride about the castle in _her_ clothes! She might need to repurpose some of them into garments more like what the other women wore, but she couldn't go about in her hiking trousers and thermal tops. She drew enough attention with the quality of the leather of her boots – though Army-issue, they were very fine for this time, with good sturdy soles that didn't feel the passage of time or hard-wearing. Mrs Fitzgibbons stared at her, giving her shirt and trousers a discerning eye. "I…sold all my finer things. Men's clothing is far easier to keep clean and doesn't draw as much attention."

"Mm," Mrs Fitzgibbons said, and Lillian couldn't tell if it was disapproving or whether the woman was agreeing with simple fact.

"Would take a lot tae draw attention from ye, Mistress Egan," she said, almost chidingly. Lillian didn't know what to make of that. "Leave it wi' me, I'll find ye somethin' proper to wear."

"Thank you, Mrs Fitzgibbons."

"Everybody calls me Mrs Fitz," the large woman said, pausing at the threshold of the small room, Willie all but pinioned to her side, still wrapped up in the blanket. "You may also." Lillian smiled, unable to squash the feeling that she might have made a friend. "Jamie – mind ye do as the lady tells you." The door closed quietly behind Mrs Fitz, and Lillian glanced at Jamie in the quiet. Only the crackling of the fire made any noise, the walls so thick sound was insulated from the rest of the castle.

It occurred to her this was the first time she and Jamie had ever been truly alone. And that thought seemed to have dawned on Jamie, too; he looked a little uncomfortable, glancing at the door, at her, resembling a trapped deer. Well, he had the colouring for it.

She eyed Jamie, remembering Mrs Fitz's final order. "Well…that opens up a _world_ of possibilities." Jamie started, wild-eyed, and she saw him visibly gulp before she smiled to herself, telling herself off for enjoying how easily she could make him blush. She gave him an apologetic look, contrite and bashful herself. She wasn't usually one to tease – or flirt. She cleared her throat, indicating to take off his shirt, turning into the CMT again, suddenly bashful. "Come on, it's your turn. Off with it." She helped thread his right arm through the sleeve of his shirt, making him inhale sharply, peeling away the filthy, blood-stained linen. She would have thrown the shirt away on principle, with its large tear, the blood stain, but knew it would most likely be mended to look like new by one of Mrs Fitz's minions. It might be the only shirt he owned.

"Jamie!" she murmured brokenly, shoulders drooping. "Why didn't you say anything?" Several of his stitches had ripped, most likely during the ambush with the Redcoats. Jamie peered down at his shoulder at an awkward angle, trying to see.

"Oh. Dinna know they were torn," he winced, giving her an apologetic look, and he smiled again. "Anyway, I could hardly say much after Willie took a knife to the heart and survived, could I?"

"I wish you had," Lillian said quietly. She sighed softly. A wave of exhaustion hit her like a tank, and she knew she had swayed when Jamie's hand rested on her arm, steadying her. She sniffed, rubbing her aching eyes, and focused on him, feeling suddenly dizzy. Perhaps she had eaten too much of Mrs Fitz's excellent stew, but it didn't seem to be agreeing with her – hardly surprising, when all she'd had the last couple of days was an oatcake with cheese and a third of an orange. And whisky. Too much of it; it kept her warm, alright, but that was about it.

"We can do this later," Jamie said gently. "It doesna hurt, I promise."

"No, I need to do it now," she said hollowly, exhausted at the prospect of having to remove and then stitch Jamie's sutures again. It wouldn't take long, but her hands felt heavy and clumsy. She rubbed her eyes again, suddenly feeling like she wanted to burst into tears. She was definitely reaching her limit. She guided Jamie to the window, to the natural light, and sat him down on the stool. Barely brushing her fingertips against his hot skin, and aching for that warmth, she angled his head so she could see better, leaning close because her eyes were so tired, she could barely focus on the wound. She felt him stiffen beneath her touch, gentle as it was, and he seemed to be holding his breath as she inspected the damage. Away from the horse, their closeness had taken on a different feeling; in the wild, it had been natural. Here, within the hewn stone walls of Castle Leoch, it felt…illicit. As if they were stealing something precious.

She squashed those thoughts, the blurred images and desire to just curl up on that inviting four-poster bed with Jamie's now-familiar warmth and scent and hard body. It had been such a long time since she had slept with someone, and her lungs ached at the impending isolation that would come with Jamie's exit.

Lillian started again. Washing her hands with hot water, this time, and then whisky. Preparing her suture needle. The fresh bandage, this time from Mrs Fitz's stock. The herbs and other natural remedies to combat infection. And her. Her and Jamie. Him holding his breath between each stitch, knuckles white, her standing with knees threatening to tremble and give out under the weight of her exhaustion. His hand finally resting on her hip when she did sway, having to stop, close her eyes, count to three as she breathed in and exhaled slowly, delirious with tiredness. She was slower than the first time, blinking hard between each stitch, hiding her anger that he had sat in pain for hours, with a healer not even metres away but pressed up against him the entire time.

Finally she finished, using her scissors to cut the thread. She cleansed the wound, bandaging it, and stumbled when she went to her knees with a wider length of cloth. Taking a steadying breath, she wrapped her arms around Jamie's noticeably broad chest, too dazed by exhaustion to truly appreciate the treat, binding his right arm to his torso.

As she stood, pushing herself to her feet, bracing her hands on his knees, her joints cracked ominously, her muscles squealing in protest, and she sighed, hyper-conscious of the four-poster bed behind her. She looked Jamie in the eye, letting him see how exhausted she was, and cupped his marvellous chin in her hand. Giving him a stern look, she said gently, "Always tell me when you're hurt. I'll be more annoyed that you didn't come to me, than at any imposition you think you might be causing me." Jamie nodded slightly, the corner of his mouth lilting up into an endearingly shy smile.

"Yes, Mistress," he said softly, gazing at her. She eyed his filthy shirt, frowning, and instead of tucking it over him, reached around him to help pull his plaid over his shoulders.

"You shouldn't go wandering about the castle in naught but your skin," she said softly, aware of the chill in the air away from the fire, the warmth radiating from Jamie's body. She tucked the plaid around him, gathering folds into his bandages to keep it in place, enjoying the simplicity and intimacy of _touch_ , feeling another person's warmth, and he gave her a warm, sleepy smile.

"Get ye tae bed, lass," he said softly. "I'll wager someone will want to speak with ye 'fore long." She nodded, or tried to; she might have dozed off in the time it took her to raise her chin again. She handed Jamie his weapons and belts, his ruined shirt, and swayed where she stood, glad he thought to draw the door to behind him, leaving her with nothing but the crackling of the fire, and the four-poster bed calling to her. She propped her rucksack against the wall, tucked safe out of safe next to the bedside-cabinet, and paused only to strip down completely and fold her things neatly in a pile on the large round table in the corner of the room, taking the pins from her now-limp bun, before leaping under the covers. She drew the hangings, feeling like Harry Potter in his tower dormitory, wondering how on earth the Hogwarts students didn't die of pneumonia before dragons and Quidditch could finish them off. _Magic_ , she thought, falling into a deep, oblivious sleep.

* * *

 **A.N.** : I was exhausted just writing this chapter! I can't imagine how it'd actually feel to go through what Lillian has the last few days! But I know I'd grab Jamie and tumble into that huge bed. For cuddles, of course. No honky-pinky, as my friend once said, at all… None whatsoever…


	8. Himself

**A.N.** : Good evening! Another chapter for you lovelies, to get us over the hump-day. Wednesday. Almost the weekend!

* * *

 **A Mhaighdean Bhan Uasal**

 _08_

* * *

She woke several hours later, gloriously warm and cosy, mentally refreshed, still physically tired but not in pain, and yawning to herself, wondered whether everything had been a very exhausting dream. The unfamiliar sheets and quilt cocooning her did nothing to either confirm or explain away her utterly real experience of honest-to-god kilted, Lochaber-wielding Highlanders; she had never stayed in one place long enough to get attached to things like her favourite bedding, and in the past few months had lived in her sleeping-bag under water-repellent canvas or in unfamiliar B&Bs of varying degrees of luxury.

Resting in the quiet, gradually becoming aware that she was surrounded on all sides by dark, heavily-embroidered brocade, she settled on the grim fact that the last couple of days had not been a dream. Or she was still comatose; or her mind was still fractured, fixated on _this_ rather than the harsh reality of her own abysmal life, trapped inside her own mind.

Either way, there was nothing she could do but climb out of bed. If she didn't do it now, she never would. Twitching the hangings aside, she noted the difference in the light; it had stopped snowing, she saw through the diamond-paned window, but there was a bright white glow that suggested sunshine reflecting off a lot of the stuff. Someone had been in to tend to the fire, and she reluctantly pulled herself from the wonderfully warm bed, feeling the chill. She spread her tartan out, carefully picking off bits of twig and leaves, horse-hair and the random _stuff_ that wool tended to pick up while being dragged around outdoors. The twelve yards of tartan having been left draped over the chair by the fire, it had dried, lovely and warm, and she wrapped herself up in it rather than dress, her eyes drawn to her rucksack.

Whether this was real, a coma, or a psychotic break, there was nothing she could do but make the best of the situation at hand. If it wasn't 'real' her things wouldn't matter; if it was, the contents of her pack were all she had to build a story, an alibi if necessary, a past and a way to piece together a future. Remembering her oath taken from Dougal Mackenzie, and Jamie's murmuring to Mrs Fitz on their arrival, Jamie's quiet warning before he had left the room earlier that someone would want to meet with her, she thought it best she get things sorted out before there was a knock on the door, propelling her further into this absurd new world she found herself in.

Intent on hiking the Highlands, with her sister's house sold, having postponed searching for new digs so she could travel freely without worrying about making rental payments (she now being unemployed and never having owned her own property), Lillian had packed sparingly, taking with her only enough clothes to keep her warm and dry for three days at a time, and the necessities. Her most treasured belongings. She hadn't wanted to leave them anywhere – her mother's jewellery, Granddad's pocket-watch, her own old leather-bound journals full of her now-invaluable knowledge of healing herbs and remedies. Her tiffin stack; her sewing roll; the knitting-needles, yarn and an enormous squashy bag full of brand-new silk and cotton embroidery threads she had bought at the tiny, lovely craft shop in Inverness. Her half-completed projects and little bits and pieces she used while she sewed were gathered together, tucked into pockets and bags: in the evenings, either by her solitary fire in the countryside or sat in a B&B parlour next to the radiator, she would bring out her sewing.

It was the one truly _feminine_ pastime Granddad had encouraged her in, and she enjoyed the minutiae of detail that went into every design she stitched – the stitches themselves, the colours, the composition, how the fabric would react to the thread. She had closer to one-hundred different colours, eat coiled neatly in tiny paper rings, some brand-new, others she had only a few threads left, but gazing at the brilliant array of colours arranged on the quilt, realised how precious they were. Silk and cotton threads in those colours!

She had her jewellery, two oranges, several sachets of loose-leaf teas purchased from the tiny independent shop in the Inverness high-street, several yards of fabric – natural Irish linen, and a beautifully soft chambray-like cotton in a rich darker grey-blue – her sewing-roll and a large, exquisite Tunbridge Ware sewing-box Granddad had given her on her wedding-day, with secret compartments and little hidey-holes and perfect little lift-out trays, and her now-useless purse, with a handful of change that wouldn't come into use for hundreds of years, a £5 note, bus-ticket stubs, receipts, loyalty-cards, her sister's contact details in New Zealand. In a precarious stack were her leather-bound journals full of her now-invaluable botanical knowledge and medical applications, and several hand-stamped linen-bound hardback copies of her favourite Shakespeare plays. Two laminated photographs rested conspicuously on the quilt, beside the pistol and the gorgeous knife she had acquired from a dead Redcoat soldier. A significantly-depleted stock of gauze and bandages rested in rolls beside her natural antiseptic ointment, thankfully-clean knickers resting in a pile by her toothbrush, _Sensodyne_ toothpaste and floss, her manicure kit (nail clippers, almond-oil cuticle balm, buffer and glass file) and small bag of random, useful junk – angled tweezers, Burt's Bees mint beeswax lip-balm, the last of her _Feminax_ period-pain drugs, a few tampons, auburn hair-ties, a pot of two-hundred hair-pins, a large box of matches, blister-pads and safety-pins.

Her worldly possessions, now made invaluable by circumstance. She sighed heavily, rubbing her hands over her face, slapping her cheeks lightly to wake herself up. She knew she couldn't count on the fact that people _wouldn't_ go through her belongings out of common decency. Not when she was an Englishwoman and had been _procured_ in suspicious circumstances, dressed as a man, trained as a physician and more woman than any of them could handle. So, she had to make her belongings look as if they truly _fit_.

The acrid smell of burning plastic lingered only as long as the bits and pieces she removed from her possessions took to burn; she consolidated all of her now-prized possessions into her sewing-box, as she had planned to do that day after visiting Craigh na dun, rearranging everything neatly and meticulously so things weren't damaged. The books were acceptable, but whatever she felt she couldn't justify keeping for emergency was burned. Her jewellery she would never part with – she added the dead soldier's silver signet-ring to her collection, now resting unassumingly in a velvet pouch in one of the little cubby-holes of her sewing-box. She didn't look at the photographs – she never looked at them – but tucked them carefully into the hidden slot in the lid of the sewing-box, only found by removing the mirrored lining decorated with embroidered needle-holders and a tiny velvet pincushion sparkling with coloured-pearl pins.

She folded her clean clothes back into her rucksack, of a mind to take the black lace from her knickers, to unravel two knitted jumpers to create a new cowl or a shawl or the elaborate gauntlets she had seen Mrs Fitz and several other women wearing. She couldn't waste the fabric, not when she knew how dear clothes were. Mrs Fitz had said they would find her something – _what_?

She didn't have to worry, though; she got the impression Mrs Fitz was incredible house-proud, and everything associated with the castle, including its staff, residing family or guests, were a reflection of her hard work. The bed had smelled lightly of lavender, absolutely spotless, the linens clean. The windows were spotless, not a cobweb in sight anywhere, and while Lillian had slept the fire had been tended to, not allowed to burn into ash.

By the time a knock echoed on the door, Lillian was sat at the large round table, wrapped up in nothing but her tartan, everything but her Tunbridge Ware sewing-box packed away safe in her rucksack, her newly-acquired pistol dismantled on the polished oak table with the tools necessary for cleaning and maintaining it, pouches of lead shots and powder spread out, polishing everything with her last clean flannel, the other four soaked in the thyme and garlic solution while she had slept, wrung out and drying out by the fire. She had her feet up on the stool Jamie had used while she sewed him up, warmed by the fire, and despite her alien predicament, she was calm, almost content. The familiar task of cleaning her gun had soothed her, some tiny sense of normalcy found in entirely foreign surroundings. It was a familiar task, and essential; a dirty gun meant death. It meant a careless soldier; and no-one needed that.

"Ach, ye're awake!" Mrs Fitz exclaimed, face crinkling in a smile. "Did ye sleep well, Mistress Egan?"

"I did, thank you," Lillian said softly. "I think it was the lavender."

"Weel, I've found thee somethin' tae wear," Mrs Fitz smiled, pale eyes sweeping over the table, pistol parts glinting in the glow from the fire. "The laird will see you soon as ye're dressed." Lillian blinked.

"Sorry, the laird?"

"Callum Mackenzie, Laird of Leoch," Mrs Fitz rumbled, beaming with pride. "Ye had the privilege o' the escort of his younger-brother, Dougal, War Chief to the Mackenzie clan."

"Privilege," Lillian repeated softly. The highhanded inconvenience, in her mind, but Mrs Fitz wasn't paying attention to her, frowning curiously at the bits and pieces on the table. Her eyes lit on the Tunbridge Ware sewing-box, with its meticulous mosaic inlays, the moth (Granddad had always been adamant it was a moth, which were far more useful than butterflies, "seeing as they spin silk, for all they're so homely") inlaid on the lid.

"Oh, now that is _lovely_ ," Mrs Fitz sighed, setting down a pile of fresh clothing on the heavily-engraved trunk at the end of the four-poster, face softening in wonder.

"It was a wedding-gift," Lillian said, eyeing it sorrowfully. The polish was bright, the core wood glorious, maple, a rich golden colour; it was inlaid with lighter woods, some cherry-red, some rich deep mahogany, some almost silvery, in _tiny_ mosaic patterns. Mrs Fitz eyed her succinctly.

"A young widow, are ye," she said softly, with a sympathetic but not pitying smile. "Weel, ye've come tae the right place fer seekin' unwed young men – most are scared stiff by the thought of a weddin'-ring!"

"Cuts off the circulation," Lillian said, with a smile, and Mrs Fitz chuckled.

"Weel, come along, m'dear," Mrs Fitz said, gesticulating at Lillian in a very communicative way. "Off wi' that plaid, we'll have ye washed and brushed and ready to be presented to Himself." _Himself_. The Laird of Leoch. Granddad had researched the Mackenzie clan, which had a legacy spanning already several hundred years by the eighteenth-century. Several of them had been notable men, for brutality, sheer cunning, sexual predilections, curious deformities or beautiful wives. Sometimes a combination. She wondered which she'd find. She didn't even know what _year_ or even definitively which _century_ this was; she'd be able to pin the time to the laird when she met him. Callum Mackenzie. There had been a few of those – or rather, may have possibly been, _would_ _be_ a few Callum Mackenzies. And a few famous ones.

There was a lot in transforming into an eighteenth-century woman. Received as a guest of the War Chief of Clan Mackenzie put Lillian a little higher in the social order of things, a good thing – she would not make a good scullery-maid or shepherdess. But apparently her skills tending to Jamie on the road, and saving Willie's life from a stab-wound all the men had written off as fatal, had already spread through the castle; according to Mrs Fitz, Dougal had let the laird know he had returned with a physic. There was talk of her healing skills in the kitchens and in Crainsmure, the village they had bypassed on their way to the castle; Willie's mother had all but lashed him to his bed, following Lillian's orders, passed to her through Rupert, who had apparently received an earful.

It was a blessed relief, actually, dressing as an eighteenth-century woman. She saw layer after layer of clothing warmed lightly by the fire as Mrs Fitz helped her wash – rather unnecessary, and certainly uncomfortable due to the cold water, but it woke her up, and she learned how to dress herself acceptably. First, a chemise, thin soft linen, loose to the point of falling off her shoulders, with a delicate tie between her breasts, falling to her knees. Stockings gartered above the knee, warm and welcome. After that, _stays_.

 _At least it's not the 1890s_ , she thought, wincing, as Mrs Fitz laced her in. The stays of the eighteenth century weren't the monstrosities that deformed the spine and displaced organs; these were simply for holding everything in. Or rather, tugging it in and shoving it upwards. She hadn't complained once during the journey with the men; she grunted and grimaced as Mrs Fitz worked the laces of the stays. They had been finely-made, she could tell, of mahogany-brown linen twill trimmed with sapphire-blue silk. They were made to raise and shape the breasts, tighten her midriff and support her back; if she hadn't been a soldier the stays would have improved her posture, shoulders down and back. Her waist was highlighted, at least until the first few layers were draped over her.

"We'll get ye some jumps," Mrs Fitz said soothingly, her broad face crinkling into a knowing smile in the mirror. "Only I thought it as best ye look as fine as ye can tae meet Himself fer the first time." _Jumps_ , she thought. Casual short stays made of quilted fabric keeping everything in place, rather than the boned stays she now wore. Although, as Mrs Fitz draped petticoats over her head, she marvelled at the corset. For a woman who hated bras and hadn't even worn special corset lingerie on her wedding-night, Lillian admitted to herself, the corset was quite comfortable. Her breathing wasn't restricted, and although she was sure bending at the waist would be a slight restriction, this could only benefit women having to lift with the legs, protecting the back.

Soft, fragrant linen whispered in heavy folds to her ankles, chemises and petticoats, warming her legs. It was a strange sensation, the long skirts and no knickers, and oddly titillating. A skirt of finely-woven wool, considerably finer quality than what she had seen the women in the kitchens wearing, was secured over a sausage tied around her waist that she could only describe as a 'bum-roll', widening her hips so the folds of the skirt, tied at her back and at her waist, fell beautifully to her ankles, just showing the tips of her toes. The bodice, sleeves laced on separately, was of fine velvet, though aged; the colour had faded.

Her tartan was inspected for cleanliness by Mrs Fitz before she helped arrange it over Lillian's dress as a true _earasaid_ , methodically showing Lillian how to pleat the fabric and arrange it. She seemed to understand without Lillian having to say a word that though the tartan was Lillian's, she had no idea how to wear it as a Scotswoman. People had decided she was English.

Trying to decide on her lineage was a double-edged sword, she had realised. To let people believe she was purely English had its own dangers; why had she come to the Highlands, was she an outlaw, a murderess, a spy? But to claim Scottish ancestry was equally dangerous; _who_ was her family, her clan? Would enquiries be made if she named names? Did her family's ancestral tartan already resemble the one she now wore? Had Murtagh known what clan she had had contact with, at the very least, if not descending from them, the first time he'd lugged her rucksack over to his pony in the dying sunlight to carry her to that cottage? She had had it draped around her and Jamie, and then around Willie, for days; it was as different from the Mackenzie tartan as Murtagh and Jamie's was. They'd notice; those men were a lot of things but stupid wasn't one of them.

"Such beautiful hair," Mrs Fitz sighed wistfully, rolling her R's and taking Lillian's long hair in her palms, luxuriating in the length and softness of her bright copper hair. At thirteen years old, obsessed with the Winona Ryder film _Little Women_ , Bridie had teased Lillian that her sheet of thick, wavy copper hair was her "one beauty". "Full of copper and cinnamon and gold. Kissed by fire."

Lillian smiled at Mrs Fitz in the small mirror on the table, as the older woman tenderly brushed her long red locks with a silver-handled brush after having combed out all of the tangles and bits of leaves and twigs, with the delicate ministrations of a woman well-practiced with combing tangles out of small children's hair. She twisted and coiled the now shining, soft locks into a pinned bun high on her head, showing off her slender throat and her collarbones. She went through her jewellery, settling on the tiny pair of Alex Monroe 'forget-me-not' stud earrings Bridie had gifted her as a thank-you for standing up both as matron-of-honour at her wedding, but as godmother to her twin children born six months before. She clasped her grandmother's large round locket around her throat, and chose her diamond-inlaid wedding band and her mother's diamond eternity-ring for her other hand.

"There," Mrs Fitz smiled, resting her large fingers on Lillian's shoulders, gazing at her in the mirror. "Now ye're ready to see Himself."

"Are you sure the bodice isn't too…well…" She squirmed embarrassedly, giving her reflection a pointed look. Her nose would never get cold; she could bury it in her cleavage. The stays pushed up everything, and she could honestly say the silhouette was very appealing. It wasn't that she didn't appreciate how well-suited she was to the style of dress, the low-cut bodice and long skirts, with her height and _natural attributes_ as Granddad used to call them, but if she was to be meeting the Laird of Leoch for the very first time, after he'd been told God knew what by the men who had escorted her to the castle, she didn't want to turn up all tits and smiles.

"Ye look verra fair. Ye look more a lady than Herself, an' that is sayin' something," Mrs Fitz crinkled warmly, tapping a finger against Lillian's shoulder, raising an eyebrow. Lillian wondered who the 'Herself' was she referred to; judging by Mrs Fitz's referral to the Laird of Leoch as 'Himself', she supposed the lady must be his wife. Lillian gave her an uncertain smile, hiding just how nervous she felt. She was going to have to play a game, to get herself a position and some protection, negotiate terms of a contract to her favour, not back down – in a place and culture where women were rarely seen and even more rarely heard. Or rather, listened to. She imagined the men of this castle had a difficult time avoiding the advice of Mistress Fitzgibbons.

She glanced up as someone knocked on the door, smoothing the hair Mrs Fitz had pinned to the top of her head. Mrs Fitz bustled across the room and drew the heavy door open a foot, muttering in Gaelic. The door swung wider and revealed Murtagh, dark and for the first time neat, clean. He summoned her to follow him with a tilt of his jaw, and Mrs Fitz bustled off to attend to other chores as Lillian tried to navigate her new shoes, the precarious hemlines of her many petticoats, trying to remember her way through the twists and turns of a castle that had obviously been redesigned and expanded and built-upon over the centuries. It was not a neatly-planned palace, it had grown organically, through necessity. She remembered it a great, desolate structure, overgrown with ivy and rabbit warrens, the nests of robins and thrushes, she had even seen a den of foxes here. She and Granddad had played hide-and-seek, before he'd sat her down in what had once been the great hall. It wasn't there that Murtagh showed her to, and the corridors and halls were by no means deserted; people of all ages – from a dark-haired boy in a velvet blazer looking about twelve, to a withered old woman with skin so fragile it was almost translucent, spinning yarn in an airy chamber – filled the castle with life and noise. It was mesmerising to see it functional, in its prime, its role as the centre of all the surrounding lands pronounced, full of what would become prized antiques, stunning tapestries, portraits, hand-carved furniture. There were rushes on the floors, fragrant with dried herbs to deter certain bugs and other vermin, well-fed cats ranging about, torches illuminated the dingy corridors with flickering golden light, and Lillian followed her silent guide up through the castle to chambers that had a more private feel to them.

She was shown into a strange room; a cage had been built into one wall of the room, floor-to-ceiling, filled with plants and alive with tiny birds, twittering and singing, rustling the leaves. A large case held quite a collection of leather-bound books, some very old amongst new copies of _The Scottish Journals_ published annually. There was a handsome desk, more, smaller birdcages suspended on chains or raised on plinths containing exotic songbirds that wouldn't get along with the tiny finches, thrushes, robins and tits in the wall-to-wall installation, and a straight-backed chair placed by the fire. A small alcove looked out into the courtyard, three diamond-paned windows glinting in the meagre sunlight. She glanced over her shoulder at Murtagh, who nodded, not meeting her eye, and left. Seeing light gleaming off of parchment on the desk, she approached it, reading the cursive upside-down – the date was scrawled at the top of the paper, _Leoch, 23_ _rd_ _March 1740_.

Clasping her hands loosely behind her back in an approximation of her old Army stance, she moved to the windows, peering down. Young lads were playing in the muddy snow, whacking each other with long twigs imitating swordplay. The ring of the blacksmith's hammer on the anvil seemed to chime on the still air, but conversations carried on down there, and the bird in the cage beside her twittered and sang happily, hopping about. The room to her back spoke of wealth – 1740. This was a time when the average earner could potentially bring in about £20 a year, in more affluent parts, in a good year. The wealthy could accumulate £10- to £50,000 per annum; forty years from now, Mad King George's royal family would cost taxpayers £1,000,000 a year to maintain.

The Laird of Leoch was obviously a very wealthy man – the books, the tapestries on the walls, the exotic birds themselves, the size of his household and its furnishings accumulated over generations. He liked fine things and was educated, if the well-worn nature of the books was any indication.

She didn't want to appear as one of those trapped little birds, singing for her supper – but of course, she was. Acknowledging that fact, she didn't want to give the laird any reason to doubt she was exactly who she said; she didn't want to appear anxious or helpless. If she was going to live in this time, she knew she couldn't behave the way she was used to – luckily her time in the Army had given her a rigid sense of hierarchy, following orders, learning how to handle men who thought they knew everything. Women, too, but it was men she'd have trouble with now. This was absolutely a man's world.

"I see you've met some of my friends," a gruff voice said, and she just stifled the urge to jump. Inhaling slowly, she turned ever so slightly, glancing over her shoulder. It was a single cursory glance before she turned back to the window, but she'd seen what she needed to. She had happened upon Leoch while one of its more unusual masters was laird; from head to navel, the laird was a well-built, handsome man, features hawkish and eyes very lovely, pale grey, fringed with thick black lashes. But from the waist down, he was stunted, his legs bowed and painful-looking, though he did nothing to hide them with a long frock-coat.

At ten years old, Bridie had fallen in love with Ewan McGregor. Well, in Christian from _Moulin Rouge_ at any rate – attempts to make Bridie watch _Trainspotting_ had earned Lillian a clip round the ear from Granddad – but she had been obsessed with the Moulin Rouge, the cancan, diamond necklaces and David Bowie, and researched Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec. People guessed the Post-Impressionist had suffered from what, at Lillian's time of studying medicine, was called _pycnodysostosis_ ; the informal name was Toulouse-Lautrec Syndrome. And, like the artist, the Laird of Leoch had the fully-grown torso of a man, and the legs of an adolescent, bowed with the pressure of supporting that sturdy torso.

Lillian had seen his legs, diagnosing him in an instant and turned back to the window as if she hadn't noticed anything unusual in the span of a brief glance. She peered out of the window, watching an older man and woman weaving willow baskets by the fire in the corner of the courtyard.

"An interesting party," she said honestly. "And a hardy escort, their tendency to rush headlong into musket-fire and knives notwithstanding." A soft chuckle behind her, and she turned, resting her eyes on the shorter man – most people she had met here at Leoch were considerably shorter than she was, but at 5'9" that was normal for her. It wasn't normal for them, to see a looming redheaded Englishwoman, but this man took it in his pained stride.

"My name is Callum mac Campbell Mackenzie, Laird of this castle," he said, maintaining eye-contact with her. He had his hands clasped loosely behind his back, his frock-coat open, cut to the knee; instead of a kilt he wore breeches, showing off, or rather, making a point not to conceal his twisted legs. She wondered just how painful they must be.

"Very pleased to meet you," Lillian said, inclining her head; she should have asked Mrs Fitz how to address him. But as she'd not formally been told _who_ she was being taken to meet… Well, she was English; she could use that to her advantage, at least. She knew the term _laird_ was the Scottish equivalent to an English squire. It was a courtesy designation, rather than a noble title; it indicated landowner status without any particular rights. But being laird of a castle this large, well, Lillian imagined Callum Mackenzie had considerable influence in these parts, especially if he led the Mackenzie clan. They had been one of the largest in Scotland before the Uprising. _Were_ one of the largest, she thought.

It was March, 1740. Six years until the Battle of Culloden. The clans were still as strong as they believed they were.

She smiled slightly. "Lillian Egan."

"I understand from my men I owe ye a considerable debt," the Laird said. She didn't think saving a man's life – or two – should leave anyone indebted; but if he was willing to repay her with a position of comfort and protection, well, she wasn't going to throw it back in his face.

"I did what I could," she said, conscious of the mortality-rate of wounded men in a time when basic sanitation was unheard of. Willie might have died in the hours she had slept – well, she doubted she _wouldn't_ have heard about it from Mrs Fitz if he had. And with their matching tartan she doubted Murtagh would have kept it from her if any harm had come to Jamie following her administering fresh sutures.

She was only as useful, she knew, as she was useful. The moment she diagnosed someone incorrectly, the moment a patient died in mysterious circumstances, if she failed to treat someone to the fullest extent of her abilities, well… She was a woman alone in the Highlands.

And they both knew it.

"I welcome ye, Mistress," he said, indicating the straight-backed, engraved chair by the fire. He moved around to the padded, upholstered chair behind the desk, sitting down and making a good show of not being in discomfort. "It was my understanding that my brother and his men found you in some apparent distress." Lillian gave him a dark smile.

"Oh, it wasn't anything I couldn't handle," Lillian said, giving him a frosty smile. "In fact the greatest danger I found myself in was waking up on horseback, after having been attacked from behind, with no idea who had taken me. Or for what purpose. Murtagh does move quietly." The laird made a thoroughly male noise, the same Jamie made often enough, and she wondered if there was a connection.

"Murtagh tells me ye seemed to be having trouble with a certain officer of His Majesty's Army. Captain Randall," Callum Mackenzie said quietly.

"I can handle men like Black Jack," Lillian said quietly, letting out a soft sigh. She didn't like to, no-one should _have_ to. And she had the prickling sensation deep at the bottom of her spine that without the Laird of Leoch's protection, she might have further dealings with Captain Jonathan Randall.

"I trust you suffered no further molestation," the Laird said gently.

"No. There was speculation amongst your brother's men about my _profession_. And whether Murtagh's instinct on that account should be put to the test," Lillian said, with a glacial smile. "Your brother did not feel they had the time for it, however. I suppose it was fortunate indeed that Jamie ruptured his shoulder and suffered that musket-shot."

"Fortunate indeed ye had the skills to aid him," the Laird said, gracefully sidestepping the obvious accusation. He knew better than her what his brother's men were like, but with a woman like Mrs Fitz whom they had all seemed to respect and appreciate, she started re-evaluating what she had guessed about the men in her escort from Craigh na dun. "I must confess, I wish to know how exactly a lady, such as yourself, came to be wandering about in the woods, dressed in a man's clothing, with her pack full of bandages."

Lillian leaned back slightly against the back of the chair. It was a purposefully uncomfortable seat, made to make people sit up straight, the kind of feeling that sent her back to primary-school, being sent to the Headmistress's office. Or worse, being called up in front of her sergeant. The position of the chair, the light from the window making it almost difficult to see Callum Mackenzie, were strategic tools to try and unsettle her.

She was lucky her story was so simple. She even smiled, sadly, and licked her lips before speaking, "I…like to be where I can be useful. When he was alive I assisted my father; he was an Army surgeon. I am quite used to soldiers, their injuries. And behaviours." The laird gave a soft chuckle at her quirked smile of irony. "When I was widowed I decided to sell my things, and started making my way around England, offering my services as a physician where no such help was usually to be found."

"That sounds quite the adventure," Callum Mackenzie smiled.

"It isn't without its perils, I assure you," Lillian said honestly. Her head was starting to pound dully where Murtagh had hit her. Or perhaps it was the pins keeping her hair bound so tight to the top of her head. It looked lovely, so she hadn't complained, but she vowed she'd be doing her own hair from now on. Bridie would be pleased she'd be making an effort.

"And you were travelling between villages when you happened upon my brother and his men?" the Laird prompted. Lillian glanced at him, raising her eyebrows.

"No, actually. I had heard of the stones at Craigh na dun – apologies if I bastardise the name, I'm afraid I don't think I'll ever be able to wrap my tongue around Gaelic," Lillian said, and the Laird chuckled richly. "I have seen similar, on a far grander scale, in Wiltshire, and I was curious. The stones themselves were my destination; I had reached them and paused for a breath, I must have dozed off, when I heard the muskets. And – you call them _claymores_? I had found a sheltered area along the river earlier in the day and thought to conceal myself there and wait for the skirmish to pass, when…well, when I made the acquaintance of Captain Randall."

"And he was surprised to find you there, I imagine," the Laird said. His questions had a subtle undercurrent to them, not suspicion – there was plenty of that – but something…else. Trying to catch her out on something, some detail…

"If he was, the shock was fleeting," Lillian said, sitting up a little straighter, setting her shoulders as cool water seemed to fill her body at the memory of Captain Randall. She hadn't thought to examine and see if her arms had bruised – after so long on that bloody horse she doubted there was a limb that _wasn't_ bruised. "Like your brother's men he seemed certain that I must be a whore. And sadly, Dougal Mackenzie was not there to try and stop him raping me if he'd felt so inclined." The laird looked a little uncomfortable at Lillian speaking in such a blasé way.

"It's true that Captain Randall has a certain…reputation. But he's an officer. A gentleman," the Laird said, his voice soft and repentant. "And you're saying a man wearing the King's commission decided to rape a stray lady traveller he came upon in the woods –"

"He may be an officer," Lillian interrupted, with a cold smile, "but I'd wager it is _Murtagh_ who is the gentleman. For whatever reason he kidnapped me, I am relieved at least I was not left to fend for myself when Captain Randall roused from the skirmish." Callum Mackenzie's pale eyes flashed.

"Murtagh tells me ye fought off the Captain," he said quietly. Lillian gave him a dead smile.

"My husband hated the idea that any woman might have to defend herself," she said quietly, not breaking eye-contact, "but believed that every woman should know how to. He was a soldier in the Army of King George II… He taught me well."

Callum Mackenzie was quiet for a moment, his eyes on the birds in his large cage. Since seeing his legs, she imagined the reason for all these birds was purely for the Laird's enjoyment – perhaps, before his illness had taken his legs, he had enjoyed walking through his lands. Listening to the enchanting dawn chorus, watching the flashes of red and blue and feeling the breathless sorrow at watching kestrels harass nests for the defenceless young, had he once enjoyed stag-hunting, or had boar been his favourite? No, she reflected; she imagined Dougal fancied the boar-hunt. Quiet as Callum Mackenzie was, surrounded by books and tiny twittering birds, forced to rely on his intellect and sheer force of personality rather than strength of arms, she imagined a younger Callum Mackenzie had appreciated the patience and dignity of stalking deer.

"You say you are a soldier's widow, Mistress Egan?" he said finally, turning his pale eyes onto her. His features were solemn. "A pity t'was your husband's life and not that of Captain Randall that was taken. A man who ensures his wife has the means to support and protect herself is one the world is the poorer for losing. The same canna be said of Captain Randall."

Lillian stared at him, and for a second, grief hit her like a bomb-blast. She hadn't felt it so strong in years – but often it was at her most stressful that emotion hit her hard. Despite her outwardly cool composure, the heat of the fire at her back, the unrepentant gaze of the Laird of Leoch on her face, the cool room, made her shiver and sweat at once, and she was working hard not to show how tired and befuddled and frightened she was. Because she was frightened – she was…lonely. She wanted her husband. Yet again she had fallen asleep in an empty bed – she had spent more of her life sleeping alone than with her husband, and yet she craved Tommy's presence, his warmth, his touch, even his snoring, more than anything in the world.

More than becoming a time-traveller, if that was what this was.

She wanted Tommy. She wanted to curl up under the covers and dream of him. Of being _whole_. Of being safe, of being in _love_.

"Thank you," she said softly, her eyes burning. She blinked away tears before they could fall, horrified they had welled in her eyes. In front of this stranger, this Laird of Leoch she knew nothing about. She sniffed, readjusting herself in the chair. "I apologise, I…hadn't realised how exhausted I still am." Master Mackenzie nodded graciously.

"I've only a few more matters I wish to discuss with ye," he said, with a small smile, "then I am sure a rest before Mrs Fitz's excellent dinner may lift your spirits." She gave him a small smile.

"I think Mrs Fitz's cooking could raise Lazarus," she joked softly, though she meant it as a compliment of the highest order, and the Laird certainly took it as such, eyes crinkling as he laughed richly.

"He wouldna dare refuse to rise and eat his supper," he corrected, with an affectionate chuckle. "My brother tells me you extracted an oath from him. The promise of employment. Forty pounds per annum."

"Oh, that," Lillian said softly, letting out a tiny sigh. "Truthfully I cared only about the oath of protection – from your brother, as well as his men. A woman alone, surrounded by men fresh from a fight… And the threat of the Captain's retribution…"

"For your sake, I hope that Captain Randall was not seriously harmed," Master Mackenzie said gruffly. "Though for his own, I hope the shock of being bested by a woman put him in his place. He has a nasty reputation around these parts." Lillian nodded; if what she had read of Granddad's research had been true, she didn't doubt it. "Are you of a mind, then, to continue travelling the Highlands, healing where you are needed?"

She sighed softly, eyes on Mackenzie as she thought. Even if she could get back to Craigh na dun, without running into Randall or a patrol he had sent out – he'd have use of his hands, after all, to write down orders, even if his jaw would need to be set and heal itself over the next few months – what if she reached the stones and…nothing happened. What if she was stuck here? The walls of Leoch were ten feet thick in places; strong enough to keep the captain away. But, like the little birds in their cages, Lillian would have to sing for her supper.

"If it hadn't been for my altercation with Captain Randall, I would have," she said softly, eyeing Callum Mackenzie with a slight frown. "As it is, I am…wary of pushing farther into the Highlands with the threat of him chasing at my heels. I can't imagine a man like Captain Randall would forgive a woman showing him up the way I did, even if it was done in private."

"No," Callum Mackenzie said quietly.

"I…do not wish to impose on you," Lillian said honestly. "When I demanded your brother's oath I only wanted to ensure my protection…" And to see just how far she could push Dougal Mackenzie. Forty pounds per annum, and his oath that he would let no man harm her. She could ensure that never happened, but this was a man's world; and men needed to feel that they were in control. Even when they so clearly were not. "I do not expect you to offer me any place here at Leoch, I…do not suppose there is even a place for me to take."

"As it happens," the Laird said quietly, gazing at one of his birds, fussing its feathers on its perch, "a travelling healer by the name of Beaton used to reside here as physician. He tended to the needs of all in the castle, and a great many from Crainsmure – the village. A few months ago he succumbed to a fever. Ripped through him within a week. And so here we are; I am sure my brother saw your skill with Jamie and then young Willie and knew we'd be foolish not to secure your employment here. A skilled physician is a rare enough thing."

Lillian frowned. "What kind of fever took Mr Beaton?"

"T'was not smallpox, do not worry yourself," the Laird reassured her; smallpox was no light concern here. In _1740_. It ripped through cities, decimating them. Lillian had to squash the sudden desire to read through her medical records and find out exactly _what_ she had been immunised against when she was a child. She and Bridie had both had the cervical cancer jabs after their mother had died of it. "We have been verra lucky in that regard, around Leoch, the last few years. There was some worry, Mrs Fitz wondered whether he had not eaten some strange fungi. He used such things in his medicines."

"It's possible," Lillian said. Mushrooms were a lethal business; Granddad had taught her all he knew on the subject, she had devoted pages in her leather journals to accurate drawings and details about the edible, medicinal fungi – and the poisonous ones. They were a curious, entrancing thing, fungi – her favourite were the poisonous ones that turned blue immediately upon being exposed to the air. "I imagine the mortality rate of his patients would be rather high if he used fungi he was unfamiliar with."

"Sadly, Beaton's success-rate with curing patients was not as established as your roadside healing of Jamie and young Willie," Master Mackenzie said, with a warm smile.

"Well, I can't promise I have a one-hundred percent success rate either," Lillian said softly.

"With Mr Beaton's death, the people of Leoch and Crainsmure are without a physician. As their laird, this…falls upon me to remedy," Callum Mackenzie said. Lillian smiled sadly.

"You could sound more excited at the prospect of having found a replacement," she teased lightly. She let out a soft sigh, eyes on Callum Mackenzie. "But I'm an Englishwoman, and you don't trust me."

"Please do not take it…personally," the laird said softly. "I would be a fool to accept blindly any stranger into my home, my land. Especially in a position where you could either help or harm my people."

"Perhaps we could arrange a contract," Lillian suggested mildly. She didn't doubt a man of the Laird's means maintained the services of an attorney. "Between the two of us we might negotiate a salary – and a probationary period. It would give you time to gauge for yourself my skills as a physic, and if you aren't fully satisfied, well, at least it will be summer when I leave the castle."

"You seem to have given this some thought," the Laird said softly.

"It was a long ride," Lillian said, smiling. "I've nothing but my skills as a physician and my mind to negotiate with… Perhaps you might give me the opportunity to prove my value." A tiny voice at the back of her head told her she already had. She had saved Willie's life, and patched up Jamie. Whoever he was, he was no Mackenzie, but he was important enough to the Laird of Leoch's brother that he hadn't left Jamie behind at that cottage, injured, for the Redcoats to find and string up the nearest tree.

"My brother tells me you handled what they all believed to be a mortal wound with grace," Mackenzie said thoughtfully. "You doona flinch under pressure, at the sight of injury or disfigurement."

"I'm used to it," Lillian said fairly, not missing the _disfigurement_ he had mentioned. She was too used to soldiers with bits missing, thick webs of scarring from bomb-blasts. She had wanted to train further into rehabilitation, had enjoyed qualifying as a Pilates instructor, especially with the high-intensity training more suited to soldiers. She had wanted to apply to _Help for Heroes_ for a position at one of their amazing facilities – at the very least volunteer. In the position of physician here at Leoch, Lillian would have authority to administer whatever medicines she felt appropriate, treatments, exercises, she could modify her training and basic knowledge of physiotherapy, Pilates, her common sense about sanitation and general health to really _help_ these people. There was no way she could perform complex surgeries, but at least in her hands, the people of Leoch and Crainsmure might have a better chance than if left to their own devices – or worse, in the care of an eighteenth-century medicine man. _Itinerant quacks_ , Granddad described them.

 _Takes one to know one_ , she thought; wasn't _she_ a travelling healer? As far as they knew, she was. And she would have to maintain that she had learned everything from her deceased father, an Army surgeon.

"By your leave, I will consult my lawyer on this matter," the Laird of Leoch said thoughtfully. "While he draws up a suitable arrangement, please make yourself comfortable. As my guest."

"Thank you," Lillian smiled honestly. Though not as in-your-face as his brother, there was a definite aura around Callum Mackenzie, the feeling of _power_. She wondered how the deformed man had come to be Laird, especially when he had a brother so obviously more physically capable. But physical strength was not everything, she knew that all too well – now Captain Randall did too, she supposed. And there was an inflection, the faintest whisper of threat in the way he had said _As my guest_ … She would be the guest of the Laird of Leoch for only as long as she proved she was more valuable protected, _alive_.

This was a time when women were burned at the stake.

If Callum Mackenzie thought she wasn't worth keeping around, or worse, if he suspected her of anything more than being a well-educated widow offering her healing skills to the countryside, she could find herself chin-deep in pitch, angry villagers fumbling with a tinder-box.

* * *

 **A.N.** : Please review. I know the chapters aren't "exciting" but I want to take this story in a different direction than canon – because, I mean, why bother writing if I'm going to copy the original? There'll be more aspects of _Call the Midwife_ than _Game of Thrones_ but Lillian will have some shining moments. So will Jamie Fraser's knees.


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